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PROHIBITION IN 
THE UNITED STATES 


D. LEIGH COLVIN, pu.p. 





PROHIBITION IN 
THE UNITED STATES 


Aotis LOR MnO EM bp cul Bp La TON PARTY. 
AND SOF sTHE 
PROHIBITION MOVEMENT 


BY 
D. LEIGH COLVIN, PELD., 








GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1926, 
BY. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 
Leu es 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


PREBACEH 


In 1919 after the great victory had been won in the ratification 
of the Eighteenth Amendment there was held in Chicago a cele- 
bration in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of 
the Prohibition party there in 1869 and of the victory which had 
crowned a half century of unselfish toil and sacrifice for the 
public good, a half century’s devotion to a great cause. 

At that celebration the sentiment was generally expressed that 
there should be prepared an official history which should preserve 
to posterity the record of the political party which for so long 
had furnished the leadership in the advocacy of a principle which 
had been established in the Constitution of the United States, a 
political party which is unparalleled in the history of political 
parties for long sustained fidelity to principle, for statesmanlike 
vision, for mastery of the principles of government, for moral 
power and for consecration to a great national ideal. 

A few months later at a meeting of the Prohibition National 
Committee, a Committee on History was appointed whose duty 
it was to make arrangements for the preparation of such a 
history. 

In January, 1920, the writer was chosen to write the history. 
He expected that it would require twelve or fifteen months. 
Actually over three and one-half years out of the last six have 
been devoted to its preparation, most of the remaining time hav- 
ing been spent in traveling, speaking and gathering information 
which has a direct application to this book. 

Begun primarily as a history of the Prohibition Party, this 
volume has grown to include the main points in the history of 
the whole prohibition movement from 1785 down to 1926, in- 
cluding a survey of national prohibition and its administration 
during the first six years of its operation. Furthermore, it is 
more than a history. It is a study of political science applied to 
prohibition. It aims to be an authoritative and comprehensive 
study of prohibition in the United States. 

The beginnings of the temperance movement and the evolu- 
tion of prohibition are sketched. The remarkable prohibition 
movements of the decades of the fifties and of the eighties of the 


last century are studied. 
Va 


vi PREFACE 


A number of chapters deal with the consecutive, historical 
events, but there are a number of special chapters. The de- 
cisions of the United States Supreme Court have so thoroughly 
upheld the principle of prohibition and have bulwarked the pro- 
hibition argument at so many points that a chapter is given to a 
summary of the leading decisions of that Court. 

At different periods the Prohibitionists had to contend with 
other and less advanced methods which were currently advo- 
cated. So there are chapters on “High License,” “The Dispensary 
System,” “Local Option,” and “The Partisan Versus the Omni- 
Partisan ‘Plan\y 

A special chapter is devoted to “The Voice of the Churches,” 
another to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union with ex- 
tracts from some of the inspiring messages of Frances E. 
Willard, particularly her messages regarding politics. 

Chapter XXIII contains enlightening facts about the popular 
votes in favor of prohibition. Chapter XXV gives a compre- 
hensive summary of the early results of national prohibition 
and analyzes the deficiencies in its administration down to date. 

The chapter on “The Liquor Power’ analyzes the political 
power of the liquor traffic and its effects upon government. 
There are two extended chapters dealing with the deeper aspects 
of prohibition philosophy, one entitled “The Principle of Na- 
tional Prohibition,” and the other, “Prohibition and the Ameri- 
can Governmental System.”’ 

This book specializes on the political and governmental aspects 
of the liquor question. Perhaps the chapter last mentioned is 
the most important contribution made by the author. 

Select bibliographical references are given, most of them ar- 
ranged by decades at the close of the appropriate chapters, some 
at other places where relevant. 

In the method of historical treatment the aim has been to 
combine an intensive study by periods or subjects with occasional 
glimpses of historical perspective, to give the longer view, the 
vista of progress through the years as well as the events of 
interest at a particular time. In attempting to cover such a wide 
field, even with a large book, condensation has been necessary on 
nearly every point. 

The aim has been to represent the thought, the philosophy, 
the argument as well as to record the occurrences through the 
years. 

The preparation included an examination of all the material 
on the various aspects of the prohibition question in the New 


ed 


‘'f 


PREFACE Vii 


York Public Library, which is by far the richest library in the 
country upon this question, it containing the collection of twelve 
hundred books and pamphlets assembled by James Black prior 
to 1893. On account of having more of the earlier material it is 
much better than the Congressional Library at Washington where 
also many hours were spent. Likewise examinations were made 
of the leading libraries in Chicago and of a number of others in 
different parts of the country, including the Yale University 
Library and the Kansas State Library. The Columbia Univer- 
sity Library, rich in political science, has been much utilized. 

Examination has also been made of the material at the national 
headquarters of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union at 
Evanston, Illinois, of that of the Scientific Temperance Fed- 
eration at Boston and of the comprehensive collection of clippings 
made by the late Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts and Mrs. Crafts at the 
office of the International Reform Federation, Washington. 

Not only have many books and pamphlets on this question 
been consulted, to the number of approximately two thousand, 
but also many works in history and political science have been 
included. 

The preparation has involved going carefully through the files 
of the leading national prohibition papers covering a period of 
over forty years, making indexes thereof, and also going through 
some of the files of at least a score of other temperance and pro- 
hibition papers. Many magazine articles have been consulted, 
but only a small fraction of these are of much historical value. 

A number of daily papers have been examined, including the 
Chicago papers for 1855 and 1869. For more recent material 
the Philadelphia North American and the Philadelphia Public 
Ledger gave access to their files and to their “morgue” wherein 
their classified clippings are kept. The Portland (Maine) E-x- 
press, published by Colonel Fred N. Dow, son of Neal Dow, gave 
access to its collection of material upon prohibition. The files of 
the New York Times have also been used for recent material. 

Visits have been made to the homes of the families of several 
of the early prohibition leaders, including those of Neal Dow, 
Portland, Maine; John Russell, Detroit, Michigan; Gideon T. 
Stewart, Norwalk, Ohio; H. A. Thompson, Dayton, Ohio, and 
A. A. Hopkins, many of their original manuscripts, collections 
of pamphlets and clippings and files of early newspapers having 
been placed at the disposal of the writer. Mr. Edward W. Clark 
of Indianapolis, who with his father edited the Patriot Phalanx 
for many years, kindly loaned a complete file of that paper. 


Viii PREFACE 


Many others have contributed material. Colonel John Sobieski 
of Los Angeles and Michael J. Fanning of Philadelphia, early 
leaders who are still living, gave valuable personal reminiscences. 

Three transcontinental trips have been made, one in the cam- 
paign of 1920 as candidate for Vice-President and two in a 
nation-wide prohibition and law-enforcement campaign. Forty- 
five states and more than five hundred cities were visited. Many 
persons were consulted regarding the history and the personalities 
of the movement and also regarding current conditions. 

In addition several months in each of the years 1923 and 1924 
were spent in Washington, D. C., as Legislative Superintendent 
of the Flying Squadron Foundation and as Washington editor of 
the National Enquirer which gave opportunity to obtain first-hand 
information regarding legislative and political conditions at the 
National Capital and also regarding the administrative situation 
centering there. More recently visits have been made to the 
Prohibition Unit for information. 

An indication of the preparation of the author from the stand- 
points of university training and long connection with the pro- 
hibition movement can be found on page 462. 

Before publication nearly all of the manuscript was submitted 
for criticism and suggestion to a committee composed of some 
of the best qualified men of any in the country to judge of the 
accuracy, the perspective and the thoroughness of the field cov- 
ered. To these the author expresses his cordial thanks. They 
were: Dr. Samuel Dickie, Chairman of the Prohibition National 
Committee from 1887 to 1899 and subsequently for twenty years 
President of Albion College; Mr. William P. F. Ferguson, for 
over fifteen years the editor of the leading national Prohibition 
newspapers; Mr. Alonzo E. Wilson, for many years the head 
of the Hlinois Prohibition Committee and from 1900 to IQII 
editor of the annual Prohibition Year Book; Dr. Raynor W. 
Kelsey, Professor of History in Haverford College; and Mr. 
E. L. G. Hohenthal, Chairman of the Committee on History and 
Secretary of the Prohibition National Committee. 

The Committee on History, who deserve the credit for having 
made possible the writing of this book, were: Mr. E. L. G. 
Hohenthal, Mr. Virgil G. Hinshaw, Mr. W. G. Calderwood and 
Mr. John McKee. 

Thanks are also extended to the many other friends through- 
out the country who have cooperated. 


New York Ciry, 
June 12, 1926. DLs 


CHAPTER 


I 
II 
Ill 


CONTENTS 


A Sketch of the Early Temperance Movement . 
The State Prohibition Movement of the Fifties 


Factors Leading to the Organization of the 
Prohibition Party 


The First National Prohibition Convention 

The Beginning Years, 1869-1872 

The Decade of the Seventies 

The Early Eighties ; : 

The Famous St. John EEN of oe 

The Middle Eighties } 

The Influence of the Minority ath 

The Later Eighties 

State Constitutional Amendment Campaigns, 
1887-1890 

High License ; : 

The Prohibition Party in the Nineties 

The Voice of the Churches 

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union: 
The Political Messages of Frances E. Willard 

The Dispensary System 

The Party Renaissance, the a of 1900 
and 1904 . 

The Chafin and Watkins Campaign of ‘908 
andy TOI, 

Local Option 


The Prohibition pe a the ne edie 
League; The Partisan Versus the Omni-Par- 


pone Bien ; 
hse 


380 


x 
CHAPTER 


XXII 
XXIT 


XXIV 
XXV 
XXVI 


XXVIT 
AXVITT 
XXIX 


CONTENTS 


Events of 1913 to 1916 


The Progress of State and National Prohibition, 


1914-1919 ‘ 
The Prohibition Party, 1917-1925 
National Prohibition and its Administration, 
1920-1925 


The United States Supreme Coett and Pro- 


hibition 
The Liquor Power : 
The Principle of National Prohibition 


Prohibition’ and the American Governmental 
System 


Appendix 


Index 


PROHIBITION IN 
THE UNITED STATES 


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Chapter I 
A SKETCH OF THE EARLY TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 


The beginning of the Temperance Reformation in the United 
States was contemporaneous with the founding of the govern- 
ment itself. Midway between the close of the War for Inde- 
pendence in 1783 and the meeting of the Constitutional Conven- 
tion in 1787 Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, who had been 
a signer of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1785 
his essay on the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Mind 
and Body. ‘This essay is generally accepted as the inception of 
the movement which has now been crowned by the establishment 
of the principle of Prohibition in the Constitution of the United 
States.* 

Prior to this, during the Colonial period, there had been much 
legislation designed to mitigate the evils of intemperance. In 
Massachusetts there had been passed no less than fourteen dif- 
ferent restrictive laws. Most of the colonies had passed laws 
prohibiting the selling of liquor to Indians. Even New Jersey 
was by no means a stranger to prohibitory legislation. In 1678 
that colony enacted a law prohibiting sales of liquor to Indians 
by a fine of twenty pounds, the fine to be doubled for each sub- 
sequent offense, with twenty stripes if the offender could not pay. 

The two most notable bits of governmental action of the earlier 
period were the prohibition of the importation of ardent spirits 
into Georgia under Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony, in 
1733; and the adoption by the Continental Congress, on February 
27, 1777, of the resolution: 


That it be recommended to the several Legislatures of the United 
States immediately to pass laws the most effectual for putting an 
immediate stop to the pernicious practice of distilling grain, by 
which the most extensive evils are likely to be derived, if not quickly 
prevented.? 


It is significant that the first three Presidents of the United 
States each gave evidence of their concern over the liquor evil 
of their time. John Adams, second President of the United 

1 One Hundred Years of Temperance, pp. 13-15, 113-122. Dr. Rush’s essay on 


pp. 606-622. 
2 Journal of the Continental Congress, ae MIT Spi 2657 
13 


14 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


States, as a young man in 1760, led in what was almost a crusade 
against the liquor traffic in his community. 

Half a century later, in 1811, he wrote to Dr. Rush of having 
been “fired with a zeal amounting to enthusiasm against ardent 
spirits, the multiplication of taverns, retailers, dramshops and 
tippling houses” and as “grieved to the heart to see the number 
of idlers, thieves, sots and consumptive patients made for the 
physicians in these infamous seminaries.” Through court pro- 
ceedings he succeeded in reducing the number of licensed houses.* 

John Adams was one of the first to have a realization of the 
political menace of the licensed houses. Writing in his diary on 
February 29, 1760, he drew a graphic picture of the social and 
moral evils of the licensed houses and then continued: 


But the worst effect of all, and which ought to make every man 
who has the least sense of his privileges tremble, these houses are 
become the nurseries of our legislators. An artful man, who has 
neither sense nor sentiment, may, by gaining a little sway among 
the rabble of a town, multiply taverns and dramshops and thereby 
secure the votes of taverner and retailer and of all: and the mul- 
tiplication of taverns will make many, who may be induced by flip 
and rum, to vote for any man whatever.* 


George Washington wrote a letter on March 31, 1780, just a 
month before he was inaugurated President, in which he referred 
to drink as “the source of all evil and the ruin of half the work- 
men in the country.” ° 

Probably the most aggressive exercise of governmental power 
during Washington’s administration was his vigorous suppression 
of the Whisky Rebellion. 

Thomas Jefferson after eight years in the Presidency was re- 
ported to have said with great emphasis: 


The habit of using ardent spirits by men in public office has pro- 
duced more injury to the public service, and more trouble to me, 
than any other circumstance that has occurred in the internal con- 
cerns of the country during my administration. And were I to 
commence my administration again, with the knowledge which from 
experience I have acquired, the first question that I would ask with 
regard to every candidate for public office should be, “Is he ad- 
dicted to the use of ardent spirits?” ° 


The first temperance society was organized in the town of 
Moreau, Saratoga County, New York, in 1808. The prime 


3 John Adams, Works, Vol. IX, p. 657. 

4. Ibid. Nolwil, p.°84. 

5 George Washington, Letters and Addresses, edited by Jonas Viles, p. 315. 
6 Sixth Annual Report of the American Temperance Society (1833), p. Io. 


THE EARLY TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 15 


mover was Dr. Billy J. Clark, a physician. Calling upon his 
pastor, the Rev. Lebbeus Armstrong, one stormy night, he ex-. 
claimed : ‘We shall all become a community of drunkards in this 
town unless something is done to arrest the progress of intem- 
perance.” The outcome was that a temperance society was 
formed April 13, 1808, twenty-three men enrolling. It held 
quarterly and annual meetings for many years.’ 

Subsequent to this there were a number of local temperance 
societies formed and in 1813 was organized the Massachusetts 
Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, the first state so- 
ciety, which during the next dozen years formed numerous aux- 
iliaries in Massachusetts and Maine. 

The next important date was 1826 when the American Tem- 
perance Society was formed in Boston, and also in that year the 
Rev. Lyman Beecher printed his famous six Sermons on In- 
temperance. From the standpoint of effective, organized and 
widespread agitation, the aggressive temperance movement really 
dates from 1826. From that time onward for thirty years the 
history of the anti-liquor movement was a remarkable history 
of almost continuous progress and rapidly expanding influence. 
It was marked by a striking evolution in the methods employed 
for the solution of the liquor problem. 

Following 1826 was the period when temperance societies flour- 
ished in great numbers. By the close of 1829 eleven state tem- 
perance societies had been formed and there were 1,000 local 
societies and 100,000 members. By May, 1831, there were state 
societies in nineteen states and 3,000 local societies which were 
reported to number 300,000 members. By the end of 1833 there 
were 5,000 societies with more than a million members and by 
1835 the reform had advanced with such momentum that The 
~ Eighth Annual Report of the American Temperance Society 
stated that more than 8,000 temperance societies had been 
formed, embracing, it was thought, more than 1,500,000 mem- 
bers. The total population of the United States according to 
the census of 1830 was less than thirteen million. 

In New York State alone in 1834 the State Temperance So- 
ciety reported having received reports from 698 towns and cities 
which contained 1,652 temperance societies with an actual num- 
~ber of pledged members reported amounting to 320,427. ‘This 
was an increase in membership in one year of 91,642. In addi- 
tion, III towns which were known to have one or more societies 


7 Armstrong, The History of the Temperance Reformation, 1853, Chapter I. 
Also see World’s Temperance Centennial Congress, 1908 (Report). 


16 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


had not sent in reports. Estimating the membership of those 
which had failed to report, the number of pledged members in 
the State was given as 340,107. The population of New York 
in 1830 was 1,918,608. One-sixth of all the people of New York 
State, men, women and children, including both city dwellers 
and those in rural homes, were members of the temperance so- 
cieties. Still more amazing was the percentage in New York 
City. In 1837, The Eighth Annual Report of the New York 
City Temperance Society reported a membership of 88,076 out 
of a total population that year of about 290,000. Nearly one- 
third of all the people of the nation’s largest city were enrolled 
members of temperance societies. 

The movement was beginning to produce results. In New 
York City for the eight years preceding the formation of the 
New York City Temperance Society in 1829 the number of 
licenses increased 14 per cent more than the population. In the 
eight years following the organization of the society, 1829-1837, 
the number of licenses in proportion to population decreased 43 
per cent. 

The number of persons convicted of crime in New York City 
decreased from one in 204 of the population in 1830 to one in 
338 of the population in 1836.° 

In New York State in 1834, 1,472 persons were reported as 
having abandoned the sale of ardent spirits during the year in 
their taverns or stores and in addition many towns reported 
that all had abandoned the sale.° 

The number of distilleries decreased from 1,149 in 1829 to 
337 in 1835. 

Over the country by 1835, more than 4,000 distilleries had 
stopped, more than 8,000 merchants had ceased to sell any kind 
of intoxicating liquor. More than 1,200 ships were said to be 
sailing from our ports without any spirits on board. A rail- 
road and some stage coach companies had decided not to employ 
men who used ardent spirits. More than 12,000 who had been 
drunkards and, it was supposed, more than 200,000 other per-, 
sons had ceased to use intoxicating drinks of any kind.’° 

In Massachusetts three counties containing an aggregate popu- 
lation of 120,000 had not issued licenses for the sale of ardent 
spirits for three years preceding 1835. 

In 1833 was held the first of a series of National Temperance 
Conventions which were to be held at irregular intervals through 


8 Eighth Annual Report of the New York City Temperance Society, 1837. 
9 Seventh Report of the American Temperance Society, p. 112. 
10 Eighth Report of the American Temperance Society, 1835, p. 20. 


THE EARLY TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 17 


the century. These conventions, particularly the earlier ones, 
were destined to mark distinctive and progressive stages in the 
advance of the temperance movement. 

The first National Temperance Convention met in Philadelphia 
in May, 1833, with 440 delegates from twenty-one states. It 
resolved: ““The traffic in ardent spirits as a drink and the use 
of it as such is morally wrong and ought to be abandoned 
throughout the world.” 

In 1833 a Congressional Temperance Society was organized 
with General Cass, the Secretary of War, as President.** The 
year before, 1832, General Cass had issued an order abolishing 
the spirit ration in the army and prohibiting the vending of 
ardent spirits to the soldiers of the United States in any fort, 
camp, Or garrison. 

Another exercise of ane prohibitory power the same year, 
1832, was the order of the Board of Health of Washington, 
ily Aon during the cholera epidemic which declared the vending 
of ardent spirits,a nuisance and directed its discontinuance for 
ninety days. The order was given following an opinion sup- 
porting its legality by William Wirt who had served twelve 
years as Attorney-General of the United States. In 1834 Con- 
gress passed a stringent law prohibiting the sale of liquor to 
Indians. 

Many influential men were actively identified with the tem- 
perance movement including members of Congress, governors, 
and college presidents and professors. <A valuable literature was 
being developed and a number of temperance periodicals were 
being published. 

Up until about 1835 the basis of the societies had been opposi- 
tion to the use of ardent spirits. It must be remembered that 
before this time most of the intoxicants produced in this country 
were distilled liquors. Very little beer had been made and the 
consumption of wine had been comparatively small. But the fact 
that the temperance societies permitted the use of fermented and 
vinous liquors was taken advantage of both by members of the 
societies and also especially by manufacturers who saw an oppor- 
tunity for profit with the result that breweries began to increase. 
The use of cider became more general. Although the importation 
of spirits greatly decreased, the wine importation from 1826 to 
1836 almost doubled, increasing from 3,436,460 gallons in 1826 
to 6,525,2 17 gallons in 1836. “Tt was found that many persons 


11[In 1842 it was reorganized upon the basis of total abstinence. In 1842 it 
started with 80 members but by 1846 the membership had fallen to 30. 


18 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


who had joined the societies had relapsed into intemperance 
without having violated their pledge of abstinence from ardent 
spirits, having become intoxicated on cider, wine or beer. ‘This 
situation, together with the increased attention being given to the 
problem of intemperance, caused a rapid evolution in methods. 

The next step was the recognition of the necessity of total ab- 
stinence from all alcoholic liquors, distilled, vinous, and fer- 
mented. The Second National Temperance Convention called 
to consider the subject in 1836 declared for total abstinence from 
all intoxicating liquor and reorganized the national society, estab- 
lishing the American Temperance Union which continued until 
the close of the Civil War. This was the successor of the Ameri- 
can Temperance Society and was more representative. John 
Marsh was its devoted secretary throughout its existence. It 
continued to promote the organization of temperance societies 
although these began to decline about 1837. The American Tem- 
perance Union did valuable work in collecting and disseminating 
facts, in publishing periodicals and pamphlets,: and in enlisting 
the support of distinguished men. The quality of the propa- 
ganda by the end of the thirties deserves special commendation. 
For example the Temperance Almanac of 1837, which was de- 
voted chiefly to emphasis upon alcohol, whether found in ardent 
spirits or other intoxicants, evidenced a remarkable grasp of 
the problem at that early period. 

Considering the condition of the times, the limited means of 
transportation, the absence of many of the modern agencies of 
publicity and propaganda, the newly settled condition of much 
of the country, and the almost universal drinking customs pre- 
vailing at the beginning of the century, one can scarcely withhold 
amazement at the remarkable spread of the temperance move- 
ment in the dozen years following 1826. 


THE FORESHADOWINGS OF PROHIBITION 


Tt was impossible that the distinguished men who were giving 
attention to the problem of intemperance should confine them- 
selves to the drinker and neglect the traffic which supplied the 
drink. Lyman Beecher in his famous Six Sermons on Intem- 
perance in 1826 had said: “That the traffic in these liquors is 
wrong and should be abandoned as a great national evil is evi- 
dent.” And in discussing the remedies he suggested that peti- 
tions be addressed to the legislatures and to Congress, “praying 
for the legislative interference to protect the health and morals 
of the nation.” 


THE EARLY TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 19 


President Wayland of Brown University in 1833 wrote: “I 
think the prohibition of the traffic in ardent spirits a fit subject 
for legislative enactment and I believe the most happy results 
would flow from such prohibition.” The same year President 
Humphrey of Amherst College said: “It is as plain to me as the 
sun in a clear summer sky that the license laws of our country 
constitute one of the main pillars on which the stupendous fabric 
of intemperance now rests.” Likewise in 1833 Dr. Justin Ed- 
wards, the General Secretary of the American Temperance So- 
ciety, the ablest organizer and promoter of the temperance move- 
ment of the period, wrote a pamphlet emphasizing the immorality 
of the traffic in spirits and the wrong of licensing it. This was 
widely discussed and its arguments accepted in influential circles.” 

The first advocacy of prohibition supported by sustained and 
comprehensive argument was by General James Appleton. In 
1832 when a resident of Massachusetts he wrote a series of 
articles for the Salem Gazette in which he advocated prohibition. 
The following year he moved to Portland, Maine, and in 1836 
was elected a member of the Maine Legislature. In the legis- 
lative session of 1837, as chairman of a joint special committee 
to consider the entire license system of the state, he presented 
an elaborate report in which he advocated that not only the law 
giving the right to sell ardent spirits should be repealed but also 
that a law should be passed to prohibit the traffic therein. 

The first legislative document favoring prohibition is worthy 
of prominence in any history of prohibition not merely because 
of its priority in time but also because of the excellency of its 
argument. General Appleton’s report said: 


We shall not question that it was the design of the license law to 
regulate and restrict the sale of ardent spirits and even to prevent 
its abuse; but our present inquiry is not with the design, but the 
actual tendency of the law. This, we believe, has been to promote 
intemperance, to give it being and to continue it down to the present 
time. It first assumes what the united testimony of physicians and 
thousands of others has proved false, that alcohol is necessary for 
common use, and then makes provision that there shall be no de- 
ficiency, by making it the interest of a select few to keep it for sale. 
The mere circumstance, whether few or many keep it for sale, is 
unimportant, provided those who are licensed keep sufficient to 
supply the demand. It is the inevitable tendency of the shop and 
barroom to decoy men from themselves and from their self-control ; 
and our whole experience under the license laws of the state has 
proved how hopeless it is that such places should exist and men 


12 Laws Which Authorize the’ Trafic in Ardent Spirits as a Drink Morally 
Wrong. 


20 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


not become intemperate. If the poison were not freely offered for 
sale under the sanction of the law, it could not—it would not—be 
purchased. 

The best test of the utility of any law is experience; and by this 
rule the license law has been most satisfactorily tried, and there is 
no reason for supposing that the amount of ardent spirits used has 
been less, but rather that the consumption was much greater in 
consequence of the law; for the law has given character and re- 
spectability to the traffic, and has done much to fix on the minds 
of the public the impression that rum was necessary, and that the 
public good required it. 


He summarized the objections to license laws as follows: 


1. They assert or imply what is false in point of fact, namely, 
that ardent spirit is useful and necessary. 

2. That all laws are necessarily of injurious tendency which di- 
rectly legalize any trade or business which is in itself destructive 
of the peace and virtue of society. 

3. That the manner in which the traffic is regulated is suited to 
give character and reputation to the trade, and, of course, to extend 
its evils far and wide. 

4. These laws oppose an insuperable obstacle to the cause of 
temperance; so long as these laws exist, just so long intemperance 
will abound. 

Your committee is not only of the opinion that the law giving the 
right to sell ardent spirits should be repealed, but that a law should 
be passed to prohibit the traffic in them; except so far as the arts 
or the practice of medicine may be concerned. The reasons for 
such a law are as numerous as the evils of intemperance. Such a 
law is required for the same reason that we make a law to pre- 
vent the sale of unwholesome meats; or the law for the removal 
of any nuisance; or any other laws which have for their object to 
secure the good of the people of the state in the quiet and peaceable 
enjoyment of their rights, and against any practice that endangers 
the health and life of the citizens, or which threatens to subvert 
our civil rights and overthrow our free government. We would 
prohibit the sale of ardent spirits because intemperance can never 
be suppressed without such prohibition. There is no more reason 
for supposing that this evil can be restrained without law, than for 
supposing that you can restrain theft, or gambling, or any other 
crime without law... 

When it is known that the traffic in any article entails not only 
pauperism and crime upon the community, but that in numerous 
cases it threatens human life, and in many instances destroys it at 
once, it is difficult of escaping the conclusion that the government 
should interpose and prohibit it altogether. 

The objection will doubtless be made.that if we had such a law 
it could not be enforced. Now admit the validity of this objection, 


THE EARLY TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 21 


and it proves the utter hopelessness of the case, for no one, we 
presume, will venture the supposition that you can accomplish 
against law that which you cannot effect with it. 

It is sufhciently difficult to reform the manners and habits of the 
community when the influence and authority of the law can be 
brought to aid the object, but to do this against the direct and 
powerful interests of a numerous class of men created by law is 
scarcely possible. ... 

One immediate effect of prohibition would be to render the traffic 
disreputable as well as unlawful. .. . The mere existence of such 
a law would exert the most salutary influence upon the public mind. 
It would of itself go far to create public opinion in regard to the 
necessity of ardent spirits, for it is no more true that the laws are 
an expression of public opinion than that they influence and deter- 
mine public opinion. They are as surely the cause as the effect of 
the popular will. It is the nature of law to mold the public mind 
to its requirements, and to fasten upon all abiding impression of 
its value and necessity. ... All good and wholesome laws pre- 
scribe, at least, what is right, and forbid what is wrong.*? 


The first state law of a prohibitory character was the Fifteen 
Gallon Law of Massachusetts enacted in 1838 forbidding the sale 
of ardent spirits in less quantity than fifteen gallons, the liquor 
to be delivered and carried away at one time. In the Legislature 
of 1839 seventeen hundred persons asked for its repeal while 
sixty-six thousand remonstrated against its repeal and prayed 
that the law might remain intact. In the election of 1839 there 
was a change in party control, a Democratic Governor having 
been elected by a majority of one. Notwithstanding the Gov- 
ernor elected had been the first president of the American Tem- 
perance Society in 1826, he was opposed to the law and urged 
its repeal and it was repealed in 1840. His recommendation of 
the repeal of the law against the almost unanimous desires of 
the temperance element was described as “a great surprise to the 
temperance community.” ** Thus this was an early instance of 
the failure of the “good man” theory which was to have many 
counterparts in the years to come. 

In the late thirties there was a rapidly growing movement for 
the repeal of the license laws and for legislation against the re- 
tail sale of liquor. So active were the temperance societies that 
the year 1838 is called “petition” year in temperance annals and 
some legislation was obtained. In that year Connecticut pro- 
hibited the sale of spirits, wine or beer in quantities of less than 

13 D, F. Appleton, The Origin of the Maine Law; also Woolley and Johnson, 


Temperance Progress in the Nineteenth Century, p. 483. 
14 George F, Clark, History of Temperance in Massachusetts, p. 42. 


22 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


five gallons. In Maine a twenty-eight gallon law lacked only one 
vote of passing the Senate. In New York a legislative commit- 
tee recommended a prohibitory bill similar to the measure enacted 
by Massachusetts. Rhode Island and New Hampshire enacted 
local option laws. Progress was also being made in the South. 
Tennessee in 1838 made the sale of less than a gallon illegal and 
in 1839 Mississippi passed a similar law. 

In 1839 there was an interesting movement in Georgia known 
as the Flournoy movement, which was one of the first collisions 
of the moral temperance movement with bi-partisan politics. Mr. 
Flournoy, a strong temperance man, started out to canvass the 
state for signatures to a petition to the Legislature to put a stop 
to the retail sale of liquor. -For a time he met with an enthu- 
siastic response from a large majority of the people and the 
movement was stirring the state as perhaps no pacific policy had 
ever done before. But he reported that he “found more difficulty 
with men who call themselves politicians than any others.” 

At the outset there had been no intention of running candidates 
for the Legislature, the petitioners having intended merely to 
make such a showing with their lists of names before the Legis- 
lature that it would promptly grant their request. As the move- 
ment progressed it became evident that in the close contest be- 
tween the Union and States Rights parties the politicians on both 
sides had too much dread of the wet vote to dare the risk of losing 
the grogshop element. Nominations were being dictated by the 
wet element in so many of the districts that it became apparent 
that the Legislature was likely to be so constituted as to reject 
the petition. Soin a number of the counties the temperance lead- 
ers began to take measures to elect dry men, making independent 
nominations in a few legislative districts. 

The politicians became aroused and each party, anxious to 
curry favor with the liquor element, charged the Flournoy peti- 
tion to the opposite party and the politicians made haste to clear 
themselves of all connection with a movement which might en- 
danger their prospects. A bitter gubernatorial contest was wag- 
ing, great excitement prevailed, and misrepresentations flew thick. 
The defeat of the States Rights candidate by a close majority 
was attributed to the movement. It ended in failure and it was 
said that Mr. Flournoy died of a broken heart that the great hu- 
manitarian cause which he had advocated so sincerely and so 
guilelessly had been so ruthlessly slaughtered by the politicians.*® 


15 For Flournoy movement, see Scomp, King Alcohol in the Realm of King 
Cotion, p. 326. 


THE EARLY TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 23 


THE WASHINGTONIAN MOVEMENT 


In 1840 there suddenly arose a movement of such spectacular 
interest that it swamped efforts for legislation for several years, 
and in fact submerged most of the earlier temperance organiza- 
tions. This was the Washingtonian Movement which started on 
Washington’s birthday, 1840, among a group of reformed drunk- 
ards at Baltimore. It was a moral suasion pledge-signing move- 
ment with a special appeal to drinking men. It swept the coun- 
try and hundreds of thousands, many of them heavy drinkers, 
signed the pledge. 

In many cities there was a surprising decrease in the number 
of saloons due simply to the fact that so many had signed the 
pledge and quit drinking. In Philadelphia the licensed houses de- 
creased from 1,140 in 1837 to 560 in 1843; in Cleveland from 
OO7in 1626"to | Sin 1843 3/in’ St. Louis from! 134),to: 27), and: in 
Providence from 209 to 41. In April, 1842, it was estimated 
that the demand for liquor was not more than half that of the 
preceding year and distilleries were running no more than half 
of the time. Whisky was reported to be selling at eleven cents 
per gallon in Cincinnati, not half the price of the year before, and 
sellers were daily quitting the business. 

But the difficulty was that the liquor traffic was still protected 
by the law. Saloons again sprang up and were a constant temp- 
tation to those who would be reclaimed and many of those who 
had signed the pledge went back to the drink. 

The Washingtonian Movement did great good for a time but 
its advocates displayed an unreasoning confidence in the power 
of moral suasion alone to accomplish results. Connecticut went 
so far as to repeal all her prohibitory statutes. ‘““The mistaken 
estimate of the power of enthusiasm to cope with the silent and 
subtle temptations of the liquor traffic stamped with the license 
of the law brought with it a sneedy and bitter retribution.’ ** Its 
force was spent by 1843 and the fact that so many who had been 
reclaimed yielded to temptation and again became victims of 
alcohol proved to be an added argument for prohibition. 

Out of the Washingtonian Movement grew the first of the 
great secret temperance orders, The Sons of Temperance, or- 
ganized in 1842. Its objects were “to shield its members from 
the evils of intemperance, to afford mutual assistance in case of 
sickness, and to elevate their character as men.” The order 
served to provide a home for the reformed man and to sustain 


16 Dawson Burns, Temperance History, Vol. I, p. 219. 


24 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


him in the hour of trial. By 1851 The Sons of Temperance 
membership was 238,903. After fifty years of history in 1892 
it was reported that two and one-half million people had been 
initiated into the order throughout the world.” 

The Washingtonian Movement produced a change in the 
character of the temperance organizations and largely supplanted 
the preexisting societies. Many of the older societies had come 
to discuss the larger aspects of the problem, the scientific, and 
to some extent the economic and legal, as well as the moral phases. 
Their proceedings in many cases evidenced a high intellectual 
quality. With the influx of reformed drunkards the meetings 
came to partake of the character of experience meetings and 
those who did not have an aleoholic experience felt somewhat out 
of place. There was a lowering of the intellectual content of 
the meetings. This partially accounts for the decline of the 
earlier societies. 

From 1845 no-license agitation proceeded with renewed vigor. 
The experience of the Washingtonian Movement endeavoring to 
save men from the curse of drink brought to many minds the 
suggestion that it would be better to try to remove the tempta- 
tion from the man than to spend all the time in trying to keep 
the man away from the temptation. Furthermore, in the effort 
to get rumsellers to see the error of their ways and abandon their 
traffic, the limits of argument and persuasion seemed to have been 
reached. There was a residuum to whom the appeals of human- 
ity fell on deaf ears and it was necessary that the arm of the law 
be invoked. 

In Massachusetts by 1847 no-license prevailed almost through- 
out the entire state, licenses having been refused in Boston in 
that year. 

In Vermont in 1847 there were 21,554 votes for no-license 
against 13,741 for license. In the period 1845-1850 in New 
Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Geor- 
gia, lowa and other states there were many communities and 
counties which adopted no-license. 

One of the most remarkable campaigns was that in New York 
in 1846 where, voting under a local option law enacted in 1845, 
out of 856 cities and towns in the state, exclusive of New York 
City, 728 voted no-license and only 128 voted license. The total 
majority against license was 45,478. This victory in the Empire 
State caused immense rejoicings throughout the country and the 


17 Journal of Proceedings of the National Division of the Sons of Temperance 
of North America, 1892, pp. 152 and 161. 


THE EARLY TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 25 


following month twelve thousand Sons of Temperance assembled 
in New York City to hold a national jubilee and convention. But 
the next year the Legislature repealed the law, “party machina- 
tions having been employed to deprive the friends of temperance 
of the continued results of their great moral victory.** 

A notable provision of the New York law of 1845 was that 
in case the majority voted for license and the Board of Excise 
granted a license no charge should be made for such license. It 
thus removed the temptation to the voters to support license on 
the supposition that their taxes would be lowered. 

John Marsh in his Temperance Recollections says: 


The magnitude of the temperance victory in 1846 had placed 
the friends of temperance at their ease and let them feel that their 
work was accomplished. The facilities for obtaining drink in towns 
which had license by adjoining towns, especially the open trade 
with the great city of New York, made the no-license vote a nullity. 
Many politicians were most active to make capital for themselves.’® 


There was one other stage prior to the widespread movement 
for state prohibition about to develop. This was the agitation 
for the abolition of the license system. Some thought that if 
the protection of license laws were removed from the liquor traf- 
fic the common law could be invoked to stop the sale. Operating 
on this theory, Michigan in 1850 and Ohio in 1851 placed pro- 
visions in their state constitutions making it unconstitutional to 
grant licenses. But this method was found impracticable to 
operate and venders continued to sell without a license. 

What was thought at the time a wonderful legal discovery 
was the device of the civil damage act, the purpose of which 
was to discourage the drink seller by making him liable for dam- 
ages for the effects of his traffic. The first civil damage act was 
enacted by Wisconsin in 1850. Similar laws were subsequently 
passed in a number of states. 

There had been thus far a steady progress in the temperance 
movement toward the idea that the liquor traffic should be pro~ 
hibited. At first moderation had been advocated; then emphasis 
had been placed on abstinence from ardent spirits but it was found 
fermented liquors were also producing intemperance and creating 
an appetite which demanded the stronger liquors. The next step 
was total abstinence from all intoxicants. After this principle 
of personal conduct had been accepted in many influential quar- 
ters came the movement which won hundreds of thousands of 


18 Dawson Burns, Temperance History, Vol. I, p. 281. 
19 Temperance Recollections, p. 161. 


26 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


drinkers and drunkards to the pledge. Thus far attention had 
been concentrated chiefly upon the individual and the social aspects 
had been neglected. But it was found that of the many drinkers 
who had taken the pledge a large proportion lapsed into their 
former habits. Of the half million helped to their feet tempora- 
rily by the Washingtonian Movement it was estimated that two- 
thirds again fell. 

The results of Father Mathew’s work in Ireland also made an 
impression here. Notwithstanding the fact that in a few years 
more than six million had taken the pledge, thousands of grog- 
shops had been closed, the consumption of drink had been reduced 
by over one-half, and Ireland had been considered redeemed, the 
subsequent lamentable falling away was one of the darkest pages 
of history. While famine and pestilence swept the island and 
multitudes of people died of starvation, the distilleries wasted 
enough food material to feed the starving host. In 1847 at the 
height of the famine 62,000,000 bushels of breadstuffs were 
wasted in a single year in the United Kingdom to satisfy the ap- 
petite for drink. 

People now began to give more attention to the institution 
which supplied the drink. They observed that so long as the © 
dramshop was in their midst not only were reclaimed men suc- 
cumbing, but new recruits, the young men, were acquiring the 
habit. The immorality of such a traffic came to be much em- 
phasized. At first considerable effort was made by moral suasion 
to induce the dramseller to desist selling and large numbers did 
so, but their places were generally taken by those less scrupulous. 
Then attention was given to the license laws which protected these 
sellers in their destroying traffic. The laws which gave such pro- 
tection were declared to be immoral and in many cases license 
was taken away. The culminating stage was to invoke the sover- 
eign power of the state to destroy the immoral traffic—prohi- 
bition. 

The stages were rather clearly marked in the four successive 
national temperance conventions from 1833 to 1851. ‘The first 
in 1833 declared it is the duty of all men to abstain from ardent 
spirits and from the traffic in it. The second in 1836 advanced 
to the position of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquor. 
The third in 1841 commended the work of the Washingtonian 
Movement and declared that license should be universally aban- 
doned. The fourth in 1851 denounced the license error and pro- 
nounced for legal prohibition on the basis of the Maine Law. 

Briefly, the early stages were: (a) Moderation, (b) absti- 


THE EARLY TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 27 


nence from ardent spirits, (c) total abstinence, (d) attempted 
reclamation of drunkards through moral suasion, (e) anti-license 
agitation, (f) state prohibition. 


SELECT REFERENCES AND LITERATURE 


The Permanent American Temperance Documents, 4 Vols. 
They contain the annual reports of the American Tem- 
perance Society 1831-1836, those of the American Tem- 
perance Union 1837-1859 and other valuable early 
material. 

BEECHER, LyMAN—Six Sermons on Intemperance, 1826, 107 pp. 

ARMSTRONG, LEBBEUS—The Temperance Reformation; Its His- 
tory from the Organization to the Adoption of the Maine 
Law of 1851, 1853. Revised edition 1868 (chiefly in- 
cidents). 

Marsu, JoHN—Temperance Recollections, 1866. 

A Half Century Tribute to the Cause of Temperance, 1851. 

Doo.itTLeE, Hon. Marx—Temperance a Source of National 
Wealth, 1834. Republished in Delavan, Temperance Es- 
says, 1866. 4th edition, 1884, 218-229 pp. 

Journal of the American Temperance Union, the Leading Tem- 
perance Organ, 1837-1865. 

Proceedings of the National Temperance Conventions. Third, 
1841. Fourth, 1851. 

Temperance Almanacs published annually for most of the years, 
beginning in 1831. 

KITCHELL, H. D.—An Appeal to the People for the Suppression 
of the Liquor Traffic, 1848, 48 pp. 

Leading Histories Dealing With This Period. 

Burns, Dawson—Temperance History, 2 Vols., 1891. 

Dunn, JAmMEs B.—History of the Temperance Movement, in 

Centennial Temperance Volume 1876. 

-One Hundred Years of Temperance, 1885, 659 pp. 

Scomp, H. A.—King Alcohol in the Realm of King Cotton, 
1888, 823 pp. 

DorcHESTER, DantEL—The Liquor Problem in All Ages, 1888, 
728 pp. 

CLARK, Bes F.—History of the Temperance Reform in Mas- 
sachusetts, 1813-1883. 1888, 268 pp. 

AppLeton, D, F.—The Origin of the Maine Law, 1886, 52 pp. 

FEHLANDT, A. F.—A Century of Drink Reform, 1904, 405 pp. 








28 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Woo._Ley, JOHN G., AND JoHNSON, WILLIAM I:.—Temperance 
Progress in the Nineteenth Century, 1903, 503 pp. 

STEARNS, J. N.—Footprints of Temperance Pioneers, 1885. 

Krout, JoHN ALLEN—The Origins of Prohibition, 1925, 


339 PP: 


For a list of the literature prior to I&85T, see 
Marsu, JoHN—American Temperance Publications from 1804 
TOMOST, ONTOS Le Lorpps 


Chapter II 
THE STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF THE FIFTIES 


As suggested in the preceding chapter, state prohibition was 
ithe logical evolution of the widespread and expanding temperance 
lagitation of the preceding quarter of a century. In the state 
lorohibition movement Maine was a pioneer and during the suc- 
ceeding years when other states were following her example, the 
prohibition law came to be called the Maine Law. General James 
(Appleton was the first to formulate a systematic argument for 
prohibition, in 1837, and from an intellectual standpoint de- 
“serves to be called the Father of Prohibition. That distinction, 
however, is generally given to Neal Dow because it was due 
largely to his perseverance, consecration and statesmanship that 
prohibition was adopted, maintained and enforced. 

- The first prohibitory bill introduced into the Maine Legislature 
was in 1837 following the report of the joint legislative com- 
(mittee of which General Appleton was chairman. It did not 
pass, but with the presentation of that report the lines began to 
be drawn between those who adopted the principle laid down 
by General Appleton and those who did not. Bills were intro- 
iced in the legislative sessions of 1838 and 1839 but they were 
mot passed. For the next three or four years there was con- 
siderable debate, if not dissension, between the temperance groups 
as to the relative merits of moral suasion and prohibition. 

* About 1843 when the limitations of the Washingtonian Move- 
ei came to be recognized there was a renewed effort for pro- 
hibition, and in 1846 ‘the Legislature of Maine passed a prohibi- 
‘tory law, the first prohibitory . law in the nation. 

The adoption of prohibition in Maine was by no means sud- 
denly achieved. It required years of agitation and education. 
The stages in the effort may be illustrated by the events in the 
life of Neal Dow.’ 

Neal Dow first championed the temperance cause in 1829, at 
the age of twenty-five. In 1833 he was chosen secretary of the 
newly organized Young Men’s Temperance Society of Portland, 
which during the next two or three years attained a membership 

1 Neal Dow, Reminiscences. 


29 


30 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of over 1,300 members. In 1834 he was a delegate to the first 
State Temperance Convention which organized the Maine Tem- 
perance Society, Maine having been the last but four of the states 
to form a state society. In 1837 with other advanced temper- 
ance men, he helped organize the Maine Temperance Union based 
upon the principle of total abstinence. In 1839 he participated 
in a referendum election in Portland on the question whether the 
aldermen should grant licenses. The temperance side was de- 
feated by 599 to 561 votes. In 1843 he led in another local fight 
in which no-license won by a vote of 943 to 498. ‘This vote 
proved to be of little benefit other than for its educational ef- 
fect, and as an evidence of public sentiment, as the local officers, 
being in sympathy with the liquor sellers, refused to prosecute the 
violators of the law. 

In 1843 at his own expense Neal Dow circulated petitions to 
the Legislature asking “that the traffic in intoxicating drink might 
be held adjudged as an infamous crime.” 

In February, 1844, there was a large hearing in behalf of a 
prohibition bill before a committee of the Legislature. The bill 
passed the House but it failed in the Senate. In the fall of the 
same year, 1844, he again went to the Legislature in behalf of 
his bill but met with no better success. In the years 1845 and 
1846 the friends of prohibition did a vast amount of work in 
all parts of the state. Mr. Dow traveled extensively and cam- 
paigned for the election of temperance men to the Legislature. 
At the session of the Legislature held in July, 1846, he again 
appeared before the legislative committee presenting a petition 
in favor of prohibition signed by over 40,000 people. 

That year the Legislature passed the bill which thus became 
the first state prohibitory law.” This law of 1846, however, was 
not what was desired. It had been drafted originally by General 
Appleton, but it was subjected to so many amendments in the 
Legislature that it was rendered largely ineffective and stronger 
legislation was needed. 

In 1849 a more stringent bill was passed by both houses of 
the Legislature but it was vetoed by Governor Dana. 

In 1850 Neal Dow again appeared before the Legislature with 
a bill which was passed by the House but was lost by a tie vote 
in the Senate. 

The supporters of prohibition had learned that something more 


2Prior to this the Territorial Legislature of Oregon in 1844 had passed a 
prohibitory law, but that territory was so sparsely poptlated and so remote that 
it had little influence, 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES 31 


than petitions was necessary—that political action was required. 
They entered into another campaign, the Governor who vetoed 
the bill was set aside and a friendly Legislature was elected. 

In 1851 Mr. Dow, who in the meantime had been elected 
Mayor of Portland, went before the Legislature for the sixth 
time and within two days secured the passage of the law which 
came to be known as the Maine Law. It was signed by Governor 
Hubbard, June 2, 1851. This Maine Law of 1851 is the law 
from which the history of prohibition legislation really dates. It 
was obtained only after the advocates of prohibition had made 
efforts in nine legislative sessions covering a period of fourteen 
years. To bring about its passage required a tremendous amount 
of both educational and political work. 

The Maine Law prohibited the manufacture, sale, and keep- 
ing for sale of intoxicating liquors. It provided heavier penalties 
with imprisonment for the third offense. It provided for search 
and seizure upon complaint of three inhabitants, and for con- 
fiscation of liquor illegally held. 

Mayor Dow enforced the law in Portland, the largest city in 
the state, with remarkable success. He prepared quarterly re- 
ports on the workings of prohibition which contained unanswer- 
able proofs of the successful enforcement of law. The result 
was that the whole country became interested in the Maine Law 
and other states began to follow Maine’s example. 

At the fourth National Temperance Convention at Saratoga 
Springs, August 20, 1851, the three hundred delegates gathered 
there from seventeen states spent much of their time discussing 
the merits of the Maine Law and adopted a resolution favoring 
such a law. Many of the delegates went to their homes deter- 
mined to secure if possible the enactment of the Maine Law in 
their respective states. 


THE PROCESSION OF THE STATES 


During the next four years, 1851 to 1855, the progress of 
prohibition was an almost continuous triumph. Thirteen states 
passed prohibitory laws and several more came near doing so. 

The following is the record: 


1851 


1. Maine. 


32 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


1852 


2. Minnesota. In March, 1852, both houses in Minnesota 
Territory passed a prohibitory law which was submitted to the 
people and received a majority vote. A couple of years later the 
submission to the people was declared unconstitutional and the 
law became of no effect. 

3. Rhode Island. In1851 the Legislature rejected the Maine 
Law on its first presentation but the people elected a new Legis- 
lature which in May, 1852, adopted the prohibitory law almost 
unanimously. The following year an improved law, amended to 
meet certain court objections, was submitted to the people. The 
vote resulted in an overwhelming majority for the continuance 
of prohibition. 

4. Massachusetts. In rehire 1852, a petition containing 
133,312 signatures was borne to the State House accompanied 
by a procession of 5,000 persons. In front of it was a banner 
on which was inscribed: “The Voice of Massachusetts, 130,000 
Petitions in Favor of the Maine Temperance Law.” The vener- 
able Dr. Lyman Beecher was chairman of the committee which 
presented the petition to the Legislature. Later the number of 
signatures was augmented to over 160,000. A bill containing 
the chief features of the Maine Law was passed and signed by 
the Governor in May. 

5. Vermont. In December the Legislature of Vermont passed 
a measure submitting a prohibition law to the people who ratified 
it the following February. 

In 1852 the Legislature of New York was petitioned by over 
300,000 persons for a prohibitory law and the Legislature of 
Pennsylvania by an equal number of petitioners from that state. 


1853 


6. Michigan. The Legislature submitted a prohibitory or 
Maine Law to a vote of the people and it carried by a majority 
of 19,030. 

In Wisconsin the question was submitted to a vote of the 
people and the result was 27,519 votes for a prohibitory law to 
24,109 votes against. But in the next session of the Legislature 
there was a conflict between the two houses regarding the measure 
and no law was obtained. 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES — 383 


1854 


7. Connecticut. Connecticut passed a prohibitory law by a 
majority of 148 to 61 in the House and of Ig to 2 in the Senate. 

In New York a prohibitory bill passed both houses of the 
Legislature by a vote of almost two to one, but was vetoed by 
Governor Seymour. 

In Pennsylvania a popular vote was taken. The vote for a 
prohibition law was 158,373 and that against it was 163,412. 
Prohibition polled over 49 per cent of the vote and was defeated 
by only 5,039 in a remarkably large vote, the number voting on 
this question having been equal to five-sixths of those voting at 
the preceding presidential election. 

In 1854 a bill was passed by one house in New Hampshire 
and by one house in Maryland. But in each case it was de- 
feated by the second chamber. 

In Pennsylvania a prohibitory bill passed the House and in 
the Senate it passed to a third reading by a vote of Ig to 13. 
“But individuals chosen with the great object in view were not 
found reliable at the seat of political influence,’ and the bill was 
lost by a vote of 15 to 16 in the Senate. 

Ohio passed an anti-saloon law forbidding the sale of liquor 
to be drunk on the premises. 


1855 


The year 1855 was the zenith year of the early prohibition 
movement. Six states passed prohibitory laws that year. 

8. Indiana. Indiana early in the year passed a prohibitory 
law which before the year was over was declared unconstitu- 
tional in certain respects by a divided state Supreme Court in a 
decision which was regarded as a purely political decision. 

9. Delaware. ‘To Delaware really belongs the honor of hav- 
ing been the second state to place a prohibitory law upon the 
statute book, second only to the Maine statute of 1846. In 
1847 Delaware had submitted a law to the people which received 
a majority vote, but in 1848 it had been declared unconstitu- 
tional by the state Supreme Court because of such submission. 
In 1855 Delaware reenacted a prohibitory law. 

10. fowa. In this state prohibition was submitted and rati- 
fied by a vote of the people by a majority of 2,910. But in 1858 
it was practically nullified by the Legislature, without a vote of 
the people, permitting the manufacture and sale of beer and wine. 


34 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


11. Nebraska. Nebraska in its first territorial Legislature 
adopted prohibition. 

12. New York. After a hard-fought political battle in which 
the vote of Governor Seymour, who had vetoed the bill in the 
preceding session of the Legislature had’ been reduced from 
260,000 in 1852 to 156,000 in 1854, and Myron H. Clark, who 
had been the prohibition leader in the preceding three sessions 
of the Legislature, had been elected Governor on the prohibition 
issue, New York passed a strong prohibitory law which was 
signed by Governor Clark on April 3, 1855, and went into ef- 
fect July 4. Although it had been passed by the Legislature 
in two successive years, a part of the law was declared uncon- 
stitutional by the state Court of Appeals in 1856. The decision 
was by a vote of five to three and the majority did not agree on 
the basis of the decision. But the general tenor of the decision 
was that the act was unconstitutional in so far as it applied to 
the prohibition of the sale of the liquor which was acquired be- 
fore the passage of the law. This decision was disregarded in 
later years. 

13. New Hampshire. In August, 1855, New Hampshire en- 
acted a law, thus placing all of the New England states under 
prohibition. 

In addition to the states which actually enacted prohibition be- 
fore the end of 1855: 

The Wisconsin Legislature passed a prohibitory law but it 
was vetoed by the Governor. 

In New Jersey. it passed the House but was defeated in the 
Senate by one vote. The next year, 1856, it passed the Senate 
but was defeated in the House by a tie vote. 

Pennsylvania passed a law against the retail drink trade but 
it was repealed before it went into operation.® 

In North Carolina it passed one house but was defeated in 
the other. 

In Illinois it passed both houses of the Legislature and was 
submitted to the people at a special election held June 4, 1855. It 
carried all but two of the counties in the northern part of the 
state but was defeated by a large adverse vote in the southern 
part of the state where most of the pro-slavery sympathizers lived. 
It 1s said that the prospects for its adoption were very good 
until Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the idol of the Democratic 
party and Lincoln’s continuing political enemy, made a speech and 


3 In some histories Pennsylvania is included among the list of states passing 
prohibitory laws, making fourteen states in this period. 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES — 35 


called upon his followers to “bury Maine Lawism and Abolition- 
ism all in the same grave.” 

An examination of the files of the Chicago papers of that 
period made by the writer revealed the fact that those papers were 
more favorable to prohibition in 1855 than they were in the later 
period, 1917-1925. 

The total vote in the referendum was 79,010 for prohibition 
and 93,102 against. The liquor side was guilty of gross fraud 
and corruption in the election. 


LINCOLN’S ADVOCACY OF PROHIBITION 


;- An interesting feature of the Illinois campaign was Lincoln’s 
championship of prohibition in that campaign. 

| The fact that Lincoln early championed the temperance cause 
is well known. It is indicated by his widely published address 
delivered on Washington’s Birthday, 1842, in which he prophesied 
the time, “when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard 
‘on the earth.” * In 1853 Lincoln gave his support to the principle 
‘of prohibition by endorsing a radical prohibition address de- 
livered by the Rev. Dr. James Smith in Springfield and signing 
his name to the request that the address be published and dis- 
tributed. Dr. Smith declared: 


The liquor traffic is a cancer in society, eating out its vitals and 
threatening destruction; and all attempts to regulate the cancer will 
not only prove abortive but will aggravate the evil. No, there must 
be no more attempts to regulate the cancer; it must be eradicated; 
not a root must be left; for until this is done all classes must con- 
tinue to be exposed to become victims of strong drink. ... The 
most effectual remedy would be the passage of a law altogether 
abolishing the liquor traffic, except for mechanical, chemical, medical, 
and sacramental purposes, and so framed that no principle of the 
constitution of the States or of the United States be violated.® 


In 1854 upon the coming to Springfield of J. B. Merwin, for- 
merly of Connecticut, who had been appointed Corresponding 
Secretary of the Maine Law Alliance of the State of Illinois, 
Lincoln became vitally impressed with the soundness of the prin- 
ciple of the Maine Law. He gave much thought to the subject 
and it was he who wrote the first draft of the bill which was 


4 This address can be found in D. C. Milner, Lincoln and Liquor, p. 137, and 
in E. W. Chafin, Lincoln, the Man of Sorrow, p. 49. | 

5 For Dr. Smith’s address, entitled “A Discourse on the Bottle, the Evils 
and the Remedy,” see National Prohibitionist, Feb, 11, 1909; also see Robert H. 
Patton, “Lincoln, Total Abstainer and Prohibitionist,” Vindicator, July 8, 1914; 
also see Voice, Aug. 29, 1889. 


36 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


passed by the Legislature and submitted to a vote of the people 
of Illinois in 1855. Lincoln’s draft of the bill was submitted to 
several other lawyers and was revised in certain particulars so as 
to make it more likely to be passed by the Legislature. But in 
the main it was the work of Lincoln. That law is the first one 
in the statute book entitled Public Laws of the State of Illinots 
of 1855 and covers twenty-eight pages of the statute book. It 
is doubtful if there was any prohibitory law of that period which 
was drafted with greater care and thoroughness than the one 
drafted by Lincoln.° 

During the campaign preceding the referendum election in 
June, 1855, Lincoln spoke for prohibition at a number of points 
over the state. According to Major Merwin, who campaigned 
with him, Mr. Lincoln made*the most pronounced prohibition 
speeches possible.’ 

The historicity of a number of Major Merwin’s statements 
has been challenged by the liquor interests but historical inves- 
tigation has upheld Major Merwin upon so many of the chal- 
lenged points and disproved him on none that it is safe to accept 
his statements substantially in full. The writer first became ac- 
quainted with Major Merwin in 1904 and became familiar with 
the evidence which he presented and had confidence in his char- 
acter and trustworthiness. This confidence has been repeatedly 
confirmed in the researches made in the preparation of this his- 
tory. In the files of newspapers of the fifties and sixties and 
also in books of that period he has found repeated confirmation 
of Major Merwin’s statements.® 

Such were the victories up to the close of the year 1855. There 
was great rejoicing among all the advocates of prohibition. Re- 
markable benefits had come as the result of the prohibitory pol- 
icy. It was thought that ere long prohibition would sweep the 
entire nation. 

In March, 1855, the Journal of the American Temperance 
Union published this pzean of victory: 


What do our eyes see and our ears hear? Truly protections and 
blessings are flowing upon the people of this land without meas- 
ure. ... “Nil retrorsum” has been written upon every state that 
has adopted the prohibitory law and such have been its beneficial 


6 Charles T. White, Lincoln and Prohibition. 

7 The New Voice, June 16, 1904. 

8 For a fuller discussion of Lincoln’s advocacy, see Charles T. White, Lincolu 
and Prohibition, 1921; Duncan C. Milner, Lincoln and Liquor, 1920; The New 
Voice, June 16, 1904; The National Prohibitionist, Feb. 13, 1909; The Vindicator, 
Aug. 13, Irgrs. 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES — 37 


operations wherever it has been enforced that we can express it no 
better than in the beautiful language of the Rhode Island resolu- 
tions: “Prohibition—Blest of God: working no evil to friend or foe: 
raising up the downtrodden: relieving the poor from his poverty: 
carrying peace where there was contention and strife: exalting and 
ennobling manhood: and commending itself to all by its inherent 
and self-evident virtues, as well as by its peaceful and gentle fruits, 
that even its very enemies are at peace with it.” 


Then followed a list of states which had adopted or were about 
to adopt prohibition. Even Texas and other southern states 
were thought to be about to fall in line and several southern 
states did pass either local prohibition or local option acts. 


Af CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MOVEMENT 


‘1. The prohibition movement of the fifties was primarily a 
moral movement. It was the natural evolution of the earlier 
pledge-signing temperance societies and the Washingtonian 
Movement. It was the culmination of a quarter of a century of 
temperance agitation and education. 

2. In the early fifties it was comparatively easy to secure the 
adoption of a prohibitory law. All that it was necessary to do 
was to convince the people that the liquor traffic had such evil 
consequences that it ought to be prohibited. Neal Dow said that 
in the beginning they “sowed the state knee deep with literature 
and reaped a harvest of prohibition votes.” 

To secure the adoption of a prohibitory law at that period was 
almost comparable to getting laws against dueling, lotteries, or 
any other recognized evil. There is no doubt that up to 1855 
the prohibition movement was much more popular than the aboli- 
tion movement. 

3. At that time the liquor problem was a far less difficult 
one than it became in later decades. 

A. There was no organized liquor power to be combated. 
While there were many men engaged in the liquor traffic, most 
of them operated on a small scale and they were not bound to- 
gether in powerful national organizations as in later years. 

B. The liquor trafic was not yet entrenched behind license 
laws. The license fees were not sufficient to make it appear an 
incentive to taxpayers to vote to continue the traffic. 

C. There was as yet no organized liquor vote to wield the 
balance of power and intimidate political parties and party lead- 
ers. There was, of course, a liquor sympathizing vote but the 


38 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


basis of its coherence was merely that of an alcoholic appetite 
rather than an organized political force. The liquor traffic was 
not yet a serious factor in politics. 

D. When the first prohibition laws were passed the time had 
not yet come when political parties thought it to their interest 
to cater to the liquor vote and protect the liquor traffic. 

E. The adoption of prohibition laws was made easier by rea- 
son of the breaking up of the old political parties in this period. 
In the North the Whig party had largely lost its hold due to dis- 
satisfaction with its incapacity on the slavery question and be- 
cause of its decisive defeat in 1852. The voters having become 
less attached to their old parties could vote more independently 
for whichever legislative candidate was more favorable to pro- 
hibition or they could form a new party alignment with pro- 
hibition as a party principle. This they did in several states. 

It was thus comparatively easy to get a decision in favor of 
‘prohibition upon its merits. It is significant that at a time when 
even the constitutionality of submitting a question to a referen- 
dum was very doubtful, and was even decided adversely by 
several state Supreme Courts, in those years prohibition was 
submitted to a vote of the people in eleven states and in all but 
two, Pennsylvania and Illinois, state-wide prohibition received a 
majority. In nine states out of eleven the people voted for pro- 
hibition. 

4. A further characteristic of the prohibition movement was 
the over-dependence upon mere legislation. Many seemed to 
think that once a law was placed upon the statute book the liquor 
traffic would stop. The effort was expended almost exclusively 
in securing the passage of the law and not enough attention was 
paid to insuring the continuous enforcement of the law by the 
executive and judicial branches of government. 

5. Prohibition was not yet generally regarded as a national 
question but as a state question almost exclusively. State ques- 
tions are almost always subordinated to national questions in the 
general elections. When the burning national issue of the ex- 
tension of slavery became dominant, state prohibition was sac- 
rificed for the sake of the national issue. 

6. It was not sufficiently realized that it was a political ques- 
tion. Many of its supporters seemed to think that its relation- 
ship was closer to personal conduct—total abstinence—than to 
politics. In some states such political emphasis as there was 
consisted merely in the exhortation to vote for only total ab- 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES — 39 


stainers for office. However, experience soon demonstrated the 
exceedingly political character of the problem. 

As early as 1853 the World Temperance Convention, meet- 
ing in New York City, appointed a committee to whom was as- 
signed the subject “Peculiar Difficulties That Lie in the Path of 
Progress.”’ That committee reported: (a) Ignorance, (b) preju- 
dice, (c) “a third obstacle is the conduct of unscrupulous politi- 
cians in reference to the Maine Law. Today they use it to carry 
out personal or party purposes. Tomorrow they either for 
the same reason ignore it or are equally violent in their opposi- 
tion. Changes of public sentiment thus produced are disastrous 
in the extreme.”’ 

The Eighteenth Annual Report of the American Temperance 
Union, 1854, referring to obstacles to its enforcement in Rhode 
Tsland, said: “Public officers have refused under the slightest 
pretense to do their duty. Legislators chosen for the accom- 
plishment of other objects have sacrificed this to the service of 
those.” 

The same report said: “In Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts 
the law is successful but in Boston it has been called upon to 
meet with opposition from the entire city government.”’ 


THE RECESSION 


Why was it that after such a remarkable succession of victories 
in 1851 to 1855 the prohibition procession came to such a sudden 
halt in 1856, followed by a recession? It is a remarkable fact 
that after New Hampshire passed her prohibition law in August, 
1855, not another state adopted it for over a quarter of a century 
and most of the states which enacted prohibitory laws in the first 
half of the fifties went back upon them. 

In three states, Indiana, New York, and Minnesota, the courts 
declared certain features of the laws unconstitutional and the 
succeeding Legislatures did not remedy them. In 1857 Delaware 
returned to license. In 1858 Nebraska did the same. In that 
year Iowa amended her law to permit beer, wine, and cider. Even 
Maine for two years, 1856 to 1858, returned to license. In 1861 
the Michigan law was crippled by permitting the traffic in beer 
and wine, and in 1863 Rhode Island repealed her law. So by 
the middle of the Civil War only five of the thirteen prohibition 
states were leit and within the next dozen years two of these, 
Massachusetts and Connecticut, backslid. 


4.0 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The reason for this recession deserves careful study. It cer- 
tainly was not because prohibition had failed to reduce intem- 
perance or because it did not produce decided benefits where 
reasonable effort was made for enforcement. The evidences of 
its benefits were many and convincing. 

There were several factors: (a) Absorption of attention by the 
anti-slavery issue; (b) discouragement over features of prohibi- 
tion laws being declared unconstitutional, particularly because of 
the decision of New York’s Court of Appeals; (c) the imperfect 
enforcement of the law, the reasons for which were not generally 
understood; (d) the overwhelming factor was the political one. 
A study of the political phases in those states where political 
action was more advanced is quite illuminating. 


THE POLITICS OF PROHIBITION, 1851-1855 


1. Maine. Neal Dow, in his Reminiscences, said that even 
the first law of 1846 


had not found its way into the Statutes of Maine without political 
action. Earnest men do not long permit themselves to ask legisla- 
tures in vain for what they are impelled by their consciences to seek, 
without endeavoring to make up those bodies of men who will vote 
there for what is demanded by those who elect them.?® 


After the passage of the Maine Law in 1851 and the signing 
of it by a Democratic Governor, Governor Hubbard, there was 
much dissatisfaction by the liquor element of the Democratic 
party. 

In the election of 1852 they organized a bolt from the party 
which split the Democratic party almost exactly into halves. 
The bolters called their party the Liberal Party. Its committees 
in the different counties were made up chiefly of men who had 
been engaged in the liquor traffic. It was financed largely by the 
liquor interests in Boston and New York. Being presidential 
year, there was unusual excitement and appeals were made to 
vote the straight party ticket for the sake of influencing the 
national election, Maine having her state election several weeks 
before the national election. Notwithstanding this a Liberal can- 
didate drew off nearly half of the Democratic vote, receiving 
about 22,000 votes, while Governor Hubbard received the votes 
of about 23,000 Democrats, about 6,500 Free Soilers, and about 
12,500 votes of the Whigs and those who usually did not go to 
the polls. 


9The Reminiscences of Neal Dow, p. 313. 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES 41 


Prohibition had become the divisive issue in politics. It had 
divided parties athwart and had subordinated other ordinary polit- 
ical considerations to that issue. 

Although Governor Hubbard had a piurality, he did not have 
a majority and under the Maine Constitution in such a case the 
election was thrown into the Legislature. The rum Democrats 
wanted to punish Governor Hubbard for signing the prohibition 
bill. They threw their balance of power in the Legislature to 
the Whigs, and a Whig was chosen Governor. 

In the Legislature chosen that year it was said that the elec- 
tion of nine-tenths of the members turned on the Maine Law. 
Out of 94,000 votes cast at the election, about 72,000 had been 
given to the different candidates for Governor favorable to the 
Maine Law. 

By 1853 the Democratic party, having been disciplined and 
defeated by the liquor interests by means of a bolt of a larger 
number of voters than its customary majority, surrendered and 
nominated for Governor a man opposed to prohibition. But, 
fearing to alienate all the supporters of prohibition, the platform 
was left silent. The candidate being wet and the platform silent, 
the temperance Democrats organized a bolt and nominated Anson 
P,. Morrill for Governor. For the Legislature his followers op- 
posed regular Democratic nominees who were not known to be 
friendly to the Maine Law and supported either Whig or Free 
Soil candidates who were sound on the prohibition issue. ‘The 
choice between the two latter was determined by the prospects 
which one or the other might have of election with such aid. In 
strong Democratic districts where there was any prospect of 
election by so doing, temperance Whigs and Free Soilers sup- 
ported Morrill Democratic candidates for the Legislature. 

It was easy to use this method successfully in a campaign such 
as the campaign of 1853 when the parties were not divided upon 
any vital political principle, but a few years later when the slavery 
question became the divisive issue the situation was radically 
changed. 

The Legislature chosen was favorable to the Maine Law but 
it was decidedly mixed politically. It was composed of 64 Whigs, 
60 Democrats, 19 Morrill Democrats, and 8 Free Soilers. 

The political stages thus far were: (a) 1852, a wet bolt from 
the hitherto dominant party; (0) 1853, the Democratic party 
having sided definitely with the wets a dry bolt was organized 
but the drys were still divided between three parties, Maine Law 
Democrats, Whigs, and Free Soilers. The result was that both 


42 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the regular Democratic and the Maine Law Democratic candi- 
dates were defeated and a Whig with moderate prohibition 
tendencies was elected Governor; (c) 1854, there was an 
advance from a divided, opportunistic omni-partisanism in 1852 
and 1853 to a union in 1854 in a united party organization thor- 
oughly committed to prohibition. The party was called the Maine 
Law party. 

The Maine Law party was composed of a union of the Maine 
Law Democrats, the Maine Law Whigs and the Free Soilers. 
The Know Nothing, or American, party also supported the ticket. 
The election was carried and Anson P. Morrill was elected Gov- 
ernor, receiving a clear majority with three other candidates in 
the field. Every member of the Senate was a Maine Law man. 
For Speaker of the House, Sidney Perham, the head of the Sons 
of Temperance in the state, was chosen. It was an unprecedented 
and complete triumph for the united prohibition forces. 

The Legislature passed a law making added improvements to 
the existing law, the new law being called the Intensified Maine 
Law of 1855. 

Within three months from the date of the passage of this law, 
every grogshop and distillery in Maine was closed. At the mu- 
nicipal election in the spring of 1855 Neal Dow was again elected 
Mayor of Portland. 

Twenty-eight years later a well-informed writer upon the his- 
tory of prohibition in Maine, speaking of the year 1855 said: 

Prohibition in Maine was then paramount and triumphant. Then 
we had Prohibition in Maine. All testimony agrees that, consider- 
ing the period, the law was more vigorously, faithfully and thor- 
oughly enforced than at any previous or subsequent time.?° 


So successful was their work that many of the members of 
the Maine Law party thought that their work was completed 
and they practically disbanded their party. It was reorganized 
in 1855 as a Republican party which began its career in Maine 
with a plank upholding prohibition. Some of the Republican 
leaders thinking they could win what was left of the old Whig 
element by making the fight solely on national questions sought 
to relegate the prohibition question, but the Republican party 
organization was loyal to prohibition the first year. The wets 
and the other opponents of the Republican party however formed 
a coalition and, by exaggeration and misrepresentation concern- 
ing a riot which had occurred under Mayor Dow’s enforcement 


10N. F. Woodbury, Prohibition in Maine: Its Origin, History, Results and 
Present Conditions, 1833-1883. 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES § 48 


of the law, prevented the reelection of Governor Morrill, although 
he received a plurality of the votes. 

Notwithstanding that during the campaign the coalitionists 
had professed to be opposed only to certain “unwise and ar- 
bitrary” features of the existing law and had fooled some voters 
into believing that the principle of prohibition would not be en- 
dangered, when they came into power they repealed the entire 
prohibitory law and substituted a license law in 1856. 

But of the 96 members of the Legislature who voted for the 
license law only five were reelected in the succeeding election. 

By this time there was emerging a national realignment on 
the slavery question. In 1856 the newly formed Republican 
party fought its first national battle. All Maine Republicans 
were anxious that their majority in September should be so large 
as to influence the national election. The Republican leaders | 
thought that a larger majority could be secured by ignoring that 
year the question of prohibition. It was tactily agreed that the 
Legislature to be elected that September would make no attempt 
to repeal the license law, that the platform should make no ref- 
erence to prohibition and that the campaign should be conducted 
upon national issues. This was done to catch the straight Whig 
vote, which was supposed to be unfavorable to prohibition, and 
to secure a part of the votes which supported the coalition against 
the Republicans the year before. 

The Republicans carried the state and the next Legislature 
left the license law undisturbed. It was not until after the opera- 
tion of the license law had demonstrated such a decided contrast 
and the people had demanded the reenactment of prohibition that 
it was replaced upon the statute book. | 

A new prohibitory law was submitted to the people in 1858 
and carried by a vote of 28,855 to 5,912. Ever since that time 
a prohibitory law has remained upon the statute book but its 
administration has been subject to many political vicissitudes. 

2. New York. In 1854 after earnest efforts in three suc- 
cessive Legislatures a prohibitory law was passed by a large 
majority but was vetoed by Governor Seymour in a widely cir- 
culated veto message. This aroused strong feeling throughout 
the state and prohibition was thrust into the field as a major 
political issue. 

A mass temperance meeting was held at Saratoga Springs 
in the summer of 1854 at which were present Dr. Billy J. Clark 
and the Rev. Lebbeus Armstrong, who had organized the first 
temperance society forty-six years before, Horace Greeley, the 


A PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


famous editor of the New York Tribune, and many other prom- 
inent men of the state. 

Those assembled declared that they would not rest short of 
the entire suppression of the traffic and the inauguration of the 
prohibitory principle as a part of the settled policy of the state. 
They further resolved: 


That till this work is accomplished, all other political issues shall 
be subordinate to this. All other public interests shall be held sec- 
ondary to this; and our suffrages shall be sacredly pledged to such 
men, and such only, for executive and legislative officers, as are 
pledged beyond all peradventure, by word and act, to this great 
issue, and whose influence and habits, private and official, may be 
relied upon as actively in favor of a prohibitory law. 

That if to carry out this purpose, independent nominations are 
necessary, then independent nominations will become a duty, and 
a duty that shall be performed with alacrity, whatever our party 
predilections or attachments may have hitherto been.* 


In September a delegated state temperance convention was 
held at Auburn which after full consideration nominated a Tem- 
perance ticket. It resolved: 


We regard the enactment of a prohibition law as the greatest and 
most vital issue of State policy now before the people. ... We 
cannot subordinate this question to any other or defer its settlement 
to a more convenient season. 

We ask a Legislature that will enact such a law, a Governor who 
will approve it, and Magistrates and other officers who will enforce 
it; and to these ends we solemnly pledge our influence and our 
suffrages.”” 


The convention nominated for Governor Myron H. Clark 
who as a Senator had been the leading advocate of prohibition 
in the Legislature during the three preceding sessions. He had 
also been nominated by the Whigs and became the Fusion can- 
didate, receiving in addition to the nomination of the Temperance 
convention that of the incipient Republican party and of a faction 
of the Democrats. For Lieutenant Governor the Temperance 
convention nominated Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New 
York Times. 

There was a spirited campaign. Although a Know Nothing 
candidate drew off some of the votes which the Fusion Temper- 
ance forces might otherwise have received, Clark and Raymond 
were elected and Governor Seymour, who received the united 
liquor support, polled only one-third of the votes. 


11 Journal of the American Temperance Union, September, 1854, p. 69. 
12 Jbid., October, 1854. 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES § 45 


0 


Under a Temperance administration a strong prohibitory law 
was enacted in 1855 and went into effect July 4 that year. Not- 
withstanding intense opposition by the liquor interests, they hav- 
ing held three state conventions within a year and having or- 
ganized by precincts, wards, and counties, the law was proving 
beneficial and had every prospect of being maintained until cer- 
tain features of the law were declared unconstitutional, March 
25, 1856. Then followed a period of discouragement and un- 
certainty, discouragement because of the decision and uncertainty 
as to what to do politically owing to the changed conditions as 
a result of the increasing dominance of the slavery issue and 
the rise of the Republican party. 

In the very beginning of the Republican party there seemed 
to be a natural alliance between those opposed to slavery and those 
opposed to liquor. At any rate the temperance people were prac- 
tically unanimous in their opposition to the aggressions of slavery, 
although not all opposed to slavery would support prohibition. 
In the Republican state platform in 1855 there was a plank favor- 
ing prohibition. 

But in 1856 the situation was changed. When the represent- 
atives of the temperance movement went to the Republican state 
convention seeking a platform expression favoring the reenact- 
ment of a constitutional prohibitory law, their request was denied. 
John Marsh, the Secretary of the American Temperance Union, 
in his Temperance Recollections, 1866, reported their experiences : 


Thousands of men, we were told, there were in the state who 
would vote for an anti-slavery Governor who would not vote for 
prohibition. Now you must stand aside; give us your vote or New 
York goes for slavery.® 


The Republican party was organized upon the issue of opposi- 
tion to the extension of slavery. It was unwilling to risk the 
loss of wet anti-slavery votes by committing itself to prohibition. 
On the other hand, it could command the votes of the dry anti- 
slavery men anyhow because dry men were vitally interested in 
the movement against slavery. The outcome was that no party 
would assume the responsibility for prohibition, the liquor traffic 
was undisturbed and New York went back to license. 

3. Indiana. In 1854 a wave of prohibition sentiment swept 
over Indiana. The immediate cause of the uprising was the 
decision of the state Supreme Court declaring the law of 1853 
unconstitutional. The moral elements throughout the state were 


13 John Marsh, Temperance Recollections, p. 297. 


46 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


aroused and there was a strong determination to abolish the 
saloon.** 

In January, 1854, a mass convention assembled in Indianapolis 
and determined upon independent political action. It raised a 
campaign fund of over $10,000 within an hour and appointed 
a central committee with the proper machinery for a vigorous 
canvass. 

In May the Democratic convention resolved : 


That we are opposed to any law that will authorize the searching 
for seizure, confiscation, and destruction of private property... . 


This was a signal for a stampede from that party of the 
friends of sobriety and good order. But the excitement over the 
slavery situation in Kansas and dissatisfaction with the Whig 
party turned attention toward a third party movement. 

A large mass convention was held in July composed of those 
who were opposed to the resolution of the Democratic convention. 
It adopted a platform against the spread of slavery and in favor 
of prohibition. The prohibition plank read: “Resolved, That 
we are in favor of a judicious, constitutional and efficient pro- 
hibitory law.” 

It nominated a full ticket under the name of the People’s 
party. It carried the election by a majority of 12,623 and se- 
cured control of both houses of the Legislature. The following 
February the Legislature passed an efficient prohibitory law which 
went into effect June 12, 1855, and was described as “working 
like a charm.” Buta partisan state Supreme Court declared parts 
of the law unconstitutional for reasons which were not clear and 
on which the majority of the Court did not agree. 

In May, 1856, the People’s party held a convention, nominated 
a state ticket, and substantially reaffirmed the platform of 1854 
including the prohibition resolution. The same convention ap- 
pointed delegates to the first national Republican convention 
which met in Philadelphia on June 17, 1856, and nominated John 
C. Frémont for President. 

The national platform of the new Republican party was prac- 
tically a single issue platform. Only two planks were adopted 
outside of those relating to the slavery question, one in favor of 
Pacific Railroads and the other in favor of internal improve- 
ments neither of which would drive away a single vote. 

The purpose was to obtain votes on the basis of opposition to 
the extension of slavery and to alienate none. The leaders were 


14 An able historical article upon the “‘History of Prohibition in Indiana’ cover- 
ing this period was by Dr. Ryland T. Brown, published in the Monitor Journal, 
Sept. 16, 1884. : 


STATE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT OF FIFTIES = 47 


especially afraid to take a position on a subject which politicians 
had come to regard as a “disturbing element’’ in politics. 

The delegates from Indiana returned home with the idea of 
dropping prohibition as a principle of their party. The candi- 
dates nominated on a state platform advocating prohibition did 
not mention the subject in the campaign, and Indiana went back 
to license for sixty years. 

Thus in each of these three states there was an overwhelming 
sentiment for prohibition; in each of them the initial steps were 
taken for the union of prohibition forces in a political party; in 
each of them unprecedented success was achieved until the courts 
invalidated parts of the laws in two of the states; in each of them 
the influence of the growing national issue of slavery caused 
the evolution of the party into an anti-slavery party; and in 
each of them the new party supported prohibition up to the time 
of the national Republican convention of 1856. But in each of 
them after that convention the prohibition question was ignored 
for fear of alienating wet votes. 

The partisan interest of the Republican party which sought 
to eliminate a troublesome, divisive question thus became the 
paramount factor in the recession after 1856. 

The following table shows the party which was in control of 
the states when prohibitory laws were passed, both of the gov- 
ernorship and of the legislature. [Iowa was the only state where 
the Republican party was a leading factor in. passing a prohibitory 
law and in that state within three years it capitulated to the 
German vote by weakening the law so as to permit beer and wine. 


5 Politics of Politics of 
State Date Governor Legislature 
Maine 1851 Dem. Dem. 
Minn. 1852 Dem. Dem. 
ae 1852 Dem. Dem. 
Mass. 1852 Vilas an Dem. & Free Soil 
Wee 1852 Dem. Whig 
Mich. 1853 Dem. Dem. 
Conn. 1854 Whig Temp. & Anti-Nebraska 
Ind. 1855 Whig Temp. or People’s 
Del. 1855 Amer. Amer. 
lowa 1855 Whig & Rep. Whig & Rep. 
Neb. 1855 Dem, Dem. 
eas, 1855 Fusion Whig 


We EL. 1855 Amer. Amer’ & Rep. 


48 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


In the later part of the fifties the prohibition movement was 
enshrouded in deep pessimism. General Cary, the distinguished 
leader of the Sons of Temperance, writing of the effect of the 
campaign of 1856, said: 


It is on occasions like the present that the great and holy cause 
of temperance suffers those shocks and revulsions that have so 
often checked its onward progress and for the time disheartened its 
most steadfast and hopeful friends. The cause suffers not only by 
being made secondary and of minor importance by many of its ad- 
vocates but often by their apostasy and withdrawal from our ranks. 


From 1855 not another state enacted a prohibition law for 
a quarter of a century. 


SELECT REFERENCES AND LITERATURE 


See Histories mentioned in Chapter I. 


Dow, Neat—Reminiscences, 1898, 659 pp. 

Winc, Henry A.—Maine’s War Upon the Liquor Traffic, a 
Series of Historical Articles, 1911, 80 pp. 

Cruss, H. S.—The Maine Liquor Law: Its Origin, History and 
Results, including a Life of Neal Dow, 1856, 430 pp. 
The author was Secretary of the Maine Law Statistical 
Society. 

MarsH, JOHN—Six Reasons for the Maine Law, 1852, 11 pp. 

-The Triumphs of Temperance, 1855. 

APPLETON, D. F.—The Origin of the Maine Law, 1886, 52 pp. 

Youmans, Pror. E. L.—Scientific Basis of Prohibition, pam- 
phlet published in The Prohibitionist, republished in 
Voice, Sept. 27, 1894, one of the ablest presentations of 
its subject. 

Barnes, ALBERT—The Throne of Iniquity or Sustaining Evil 
by Law, 1852, 22 pp., republished in The Prohibitionists’ 
Text Books es7, 

CLuss, H. S.—Results of Prohibition in Connecticut, 1855, 


149 pp. 





Leading periodicals on Prohibition: 


Journal of the American Temperance Union. 
The Prohibitiomst, N. Y. 


Chapter III 


FACTORS LEADING TO THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 
PROHIBITION PARTY 


\\'The organization of the Prohibition party was not the result 
of the sudden impulse of a few enthusiasts. It was the evolu- 
tionary resultant of a number of factors or groups of influences 
which had been working through a series of years. 

These factors or groups of factors included: 

1. The background of experience with the political difficulties 
involved in the enforcement of the prohibitory laws of the fifties. 

2. The passage of the Internal Revenue Act of 1862. 

3. The compact organization of the liquor interests, especially 
the organization of the United States Brewers’ Association in 
el 6 ae 
Nu. The growth of the liquor evil during the Civil War. 

\s. The political situation in which it was felt that the object 
of the Republican party had been virtually accomplished and that 
there should be a new party for a new issue. 

6. The revival of temperance activity immediately following 
the War and the resolutions of many bodies for political action. 

Amplifying these factors: 

A. The Background of Experience. Most of the men who 
helped organize the Prohibition party had the background of an 
experience in the effort to obtain and enforce prohibitory laws 
in the fifties. They had seen public sentiment rise to such a 
height that every state in the North with the single exception of 
New Jersey had passed a law extending at least as far as pro- 
hibiting the retail sale of liquor to be drunk on the premises. 
And in New Jersey the Legislature in two successive sessions had 
come within one vote of enacting a prohibitory law. But they 
had also seen in most states their holy cause ignominiously sacri- 
ficed by the politicians. 

They had seen the number of prohibition states reduced from 
thirteen to five with poor enforcement in most of those five. 
This fact was pointed to as an evidence of the failure of pro- 

49 


50 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


hibition and that legislation was hopeless to solve the problem 
of intemperance. 

The obstacles to the success of prohibition had been the sub- 
ject of earnest consideration and analysis by the ablest minds in 
the movement and had been discussed in the temperance con- 
ventions. Some of the lessons which had been learned were: 

(1) The inadequacy of mere law without officials who are in 
sympathy with the law to enforce it. At the Fifth National 
Temperance Convention in 1865 one of the speakers was ex- 
Governor Dutton of Connecticut who had been Governor of that 
state in 1854 when prohibition was enacted and under whose 
administration it had been well enforced with remarkable benefits. 
He was also Kent Professor of Law at Yale. In discussing the 
reason for the partial failure of prohibition in Connecticut, which 
had perhaps as good a law as any state, he said: 


One principal difficulty was this: It was not so much the enemies 
of Temperance, it was not so much the rumsellers that destroyed, to 
a great extent, the force of that law, as it was the Temperance men 
themselves. They made a great effort to pass the law, and they suc- 
ceeded in passing it, and then they supposed that they had done all 
that was necessary for them to do. They thought if they could only 
get a Temperance Law, that intemperance would come to an end; 
if they could only make it illegal to sell, why, nobody would sell. 
Well, now, sir, we all know there is no greater fallacy in the world 
than that. Anybody that knows anything about legislation knows 
that a mere naked law upon the statute book is the most contemptible 
and idle thing in this world. It is no better than a water-wheel 
would be in a desert. If you do not have the water to turn the wheel 
you might as well not have the wheel. Now they stopped just there. 
They said, “We have got a law, and now let the law take care of 
these men.” ‘That was the first great cause, in my judgment, why 
that law was not carried into effect." 


(2) The advocates of prohibition had learned the fallacy of 
entrusting the administration of the law to its enemies rather 
than to its undoubted friends. 

Said ex-Governor Dutton in the same address: 


But then there was another cause of failure, which was per- 
haps more effectual than the other, namely, that the Temperance 
men allowed the execution of the law to go right into the hands of 
men who didn’t care a straw for the law, and who made use of it for 
the purpose merely of making money. They were perfectly will- 
ing to have the law executed in such a way that it would become 
odious. The duty fell right into the hands of grand jurors, of State 


1 Report of the Fifth National Temperance Convention, 1865, pp. 29-31. 


FACTORS LEADING TO ORGANIZATION 51 


attorneys, and others, who were not Temperance men. Many of 
them were opposed to the law, many of them preferred that the 
law should prove a failure, and used the form of legal proceedings 
in such a way as to make money. What was the result? W hy, it 
made the law odious. . Then, these officers of the law who 
undertook to execute it allowed our docket to be full of cases, and 
these cases crowded out other cases, and that way another set of 
men become opposed to the execution of the law. In these various 
ways the law became odious. 


(3) Some of the prohibition leaders had learned by sad ex- 
perience the uncertainty of depending upon individual candidates 
of a party to accomplish results, when it was to the party interest 
to refrain from antagonizing the liquor element. 

So frequently had they been disappointed that it came to be 
recognized that there was an underlying influence deeper than the 
personal sympathy or opposition of individual candidates or of- 
ficers. They came to realize that the existing parties were not 
organized to secure prohibition and that, party alignments having 
been made on issues extraneous to prohibition, individual officers 
could not act without imperiling their party’s success. This 
underlying influence was a party interest which had developed as 
a distinct interest, one of whose objects was to avoid the trouble- 
some question. The result was that the liquor traffic was per- 
mitted to continue almost uninterrupted. 

The demonstrated impracticability of securing the effective 
suppression of the liquor traffic through legislative and executive 
officers who owed their election to existing parties was one of the 
chief factors which prompted and hastened the distinct party 
organization. 

(4) There had been experience with embryonic parties cham- 
pioning prohibition not only in the states of Maine, New York, 
and Indiana, which were discussed in the preceding chapter, but 
there had also been a similar movement toward a party in several 
other states. In Connecticut where the law had been enacted in 
1854 by a combination of the Temperance and Anti-Nebraska 
groups, the Independent Temperance party had received eleven 
thousand votes. 

In Ohio early in 1857 the State Temperance Convention had 
voted unanimously to organize a Temperance party that year but 
the temperance leaders were later dissuaded from doing so on 
the ground that such action would imperil the anti-slavery move- 
ment. Salmon P. Chase, a temperance and anti-slavery man, was 
elected Governor. In his message to the succeeding Legislature 


52 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


he recommended the enactment of a prohibitory law, but the 
liquor side had obtained control of the Legislature and his recom- 
mendation was not followed. 

Not only in the North but also in the South there had been 
some agitation for a Prohibition party. In North Carolina in 
1854 Rev. Charles F. Deems, who later became a leading minister 
in New York City, published a paper advocating independent 
political action. 

In Georgia in 1855 there was an aggressive prohibition cam- 
paign conducted by B. H. Overby as candidate for Governor. 
He was nominated by the State Temperance Convention which 
adopted a platform declaring their belief in prohibition as the 
only hope and relief from the destructive influences of the liquor 
traffic. ; 

The second plank read: 


That we consider the success of our cause paramount to all politi- 
cal questions now under discussion in this state and pledge ourselves 
to the promotion thereof. 


They recommended the nomination of legislative candidates 
who might be relied upon to carry out by proper legislation the 
views of the convention. 

An able address to the people was issued which was advanced 
enough for a much later day. Mr. Overby polled 6,244 votes in 
spite of the fact that the Democratic party was making strenuous 
efforts to unite the voters to show that the South was a unit in 
the impending conflict with the North.’ 

These ante-bellum efforts toward party organization were 
limited in that they were merely in behalf of parties within the 
respective states, and never in American politics have state parties 
been more than temporary and ephemeral. A study of these ef- 
forts is instructive as indicating a recognition at that time of the 
need of a united constituency to uphold and enforce prohibition. 

At that time prohibition was not generally considered as being 
more than a state question. Ere the Civil War was halfway 
over, however, there were two far-reaching events which made 
the liquor question predominantly national, the adoption of the 
Internal Revenue System and the organization of the United 
States Brewers’ Association. 

B. The Entrenchment in Government. The passage by Con- 
gress in 1862 of the Internal Revenue Act was perhaps the most 
far-reaching and calamitous in its ultimate effect of any action 


2See Scomp, King Alcohol in the Realm of King Cotton, p. 495. 


FACTORS LEADING TO ORGANIZATION 53 


ever taken by Congress. It made the Government financially 
interested in the perpetuation of the liquor traffic. It stimulated 
the organization and growth of the traffic and thereafter made 
it impossible to deal with the liquor question upon its merits, 
dissociated from the question of revenue. It served to entrench 
the liquor traffic in politics and government from which it proved 
impossible to dislodge it for over half a century. 

The Internal Revenue Act was not passed without a realization 
of some of the dangers which it involved. It was said that 
President Lincoln hesitated to sign the bill because he foresaw its 
effects in perpetuating the liquor traffic, but that he signed it 
reluctantly with the understanding that as soon as the exigencies 
of war should pass away the obnoxious provision would be 
repealed. 

In the Senate, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, afterwards 
Vice-President, uttered a solemn warning of what the conse- 
quences would be. 

He declared that the federal government ought not to derive 
a revenue from the retail sale of intoxicating drinks, that it 
would give a kind of respectability to the liquor trade, that the 
liquor seller would feel that he is acting under the authority of 
the federal government. He said that it had been the struggle 
of rumsellers all over the country for twenty-five years to get 
licensed and under the proposed internal revenue system Congress 
was about to grant the wishes of the rumsellers and establish the 
system rejected by many of the states as sanctioning crime. 

Likewise, Senator Pomeroy of Kansas declared that Congress, 
instead of giving any kind of a sanction to the retailing of liquor, 
should prohibit it. He spoke of his experience in the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature, ten years before, when every rumseller of 
Boston was clamoring for a license. They detested nothing so 
much as being deprived of a license because license gives a kind 
of sanction to the business. Said Senator Pomeroy: 


The man who pays his twenty dollars can go about the community 
with perfect impunity and can make as many widows and orphans 
and produce as much poverty, degradation and crime as he chooses. 
He has paid twenty dollars for the privilege of doing it.® 


The effect of the Internal Revenue Act was even worse than 
had been forecast by Senators Wilson and Pomeroy. To properly 
estimate the effect of that Act one must call to mind the precarious 
position of the liquor traffic in public sentiment at that time. As 


3 See Congressional Globe, May 27 and 28, 1862, pp. 2376-78, 2396, and 
2398-2400. 


54 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


a result of the temperance and prohibition agitation throughout 
a generation, the liquor traffic was generally regarded as thor- 
oughly disreputable. 

Such privileges as the traffic possessed it obtained from the 
license laws. ‘These laws according to the accepted definition of 
license permitted that which without such laws would have been 
illegal. For years, even before the prohibition movement of the 
fifties, a prominent feature of the temperance agitation had been 
an attack on license laws because of their inherent immorality. 

The Act of 1862 provided for the issuance of federal licenses 
with the understanding that a license should not authorize the 
traffic in violation of the law of the state in which the traffic was 
conducted. Although the Act was remodeled four years later, 
in 1866, so as to be termed technically a tax law instead of a 
license law, the damage had been dene and the social effects of 
the tax law were substantially the same as if it had been strictly 
a license law. 

The immediate effect of the Act was to elevate the liquor traffic 
from a disreputable position to a legal plane on a level with legiti- 
mate industries. 

It gave the permission and protection of the federal govern- 
ment to the liquor traffic, protection being implied in return for 
the financial support of the government. 

Furthermore the effect of the Act was to give the liquor traffic 
the sanction of the federal government. This emboldened the 
liquor men. What mattered it if a few states did still maintain 
their ill-enforced state laws when the highest lawmaking body in 
the land put their crime-producing traffic in the same class with 
legitimate industries? The fact that they were paying so much 
revenue made them boast that they were essential to the support 
of the government. 

The Act provided for a license fee of twenty dollars for re- 
tailing and, for manufacturing, a tax of one dollar a barrel on 
malt liquor and twenty cents a gallon on distilled. This tax on 
distilled liquors was increased three times in 1864, to as high 
as $2. After 1875 the rate was fixed at ninety cents a gallon 
for many years. The Act had the concrete economic effect of 
stimulating the liquor trade. The payment of the additional 
revenue necessitated greater efforts to sell more liquor. The tax 
was shifted to the consumer, causing higher prices, and it required 
the liquor interests to be more aggressive in order to obtain a 
profit. 

It tended to concentrate the traffic in the hands of those who 


FACTORS LEADING TO ORGANIZATION 55 


made it their chief business rather than a side line. It tended to 
further develop the saloon as a specialized institution for the pro- 
motion of drink sales with all its attendant evils. One grave 
effect was to place the liquor trade in the hands of those who 
could command larger capital. While the number of establish- 
ments for the manufacture and sale decreased, the capital invested 
and the amount sold rapidly increased. 

The Act had political effects the future consequences of which 
were momentous in that it encouraged the liquor interest to or- 
ganize for political purposes, to influence the administration of 
the law. The existence of the Internal Revenue System acted 
as a constant incentive to exercise political influence either to 
amend particular features of the law or to mitigate the hardships 
of its operation. Within a few years it occasioned unprecedented 
corruption through the whisky frauds. 

A still worse effect was its searing of the national conscience. 
The nation was giving its permission and protection to a traffic 
which was destroying its own citizenship. Furthermore it was in 
a sense in partnership with the liquor traffic. The government 
shared in the profits of the traffic even to the extent of depending 
upon it for over one-fourth of the national revenue through a 
long series of years. The effect upon the average voter was not 
only to give the impression that the liquor business was as legiti- 
mate as any ordinary business but also that the government could 
not get along without the revenue. This made it much more 
difficult to get votes for prohibition after 1862 than before.* 

The enormity of the wrong of this policy was well stated by 
Robert H. Patton after half a century of its operation when he 
said: 

I challenge the most ardent apologist of the liquor traffic to 
name, among the wrongs of the past which are guarded against 
in our Constitution, one wrong, from a governmental standpoint, 
which equals the infamous wrong and injustice of our government 
adopting a policy that makes it financially interested in the death, 
enslavement and misery of its own people.® 


C. The Organization of the United States Brewers’ Associa- 
tion. One of the immediate effects of the Internal Revenue Act 
was the stimulus which it gave to the first national organization 
of the liquor interests. The Act was passed on July 1, 1862, 
and on November 12 following was formed the United States 


4For an excellent discussion of the consequences of the Internal Revenue 
System, see Fehlandt, A Century of Drink Reform, Chapters 4, 5, and 6, 
5 American Prohibition Year Book, 1916, p. 169. 


56 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Brewers’ Association. Thus as soon as federal legislation to 
raise money for the pressing needs of the government in war 
time was enacted the liquor interests organized to combat it. 
Prior to that time there had been state liquor organizations in 
several states, the first of which was in Pennsylvania where it was 
the predominant factor in preventing prohibition. 

The introduction to the constitution of the United States 
Brewers’ Association indicated its political animus and objects. 
It said: 


Cooperation is necessary. Owners of breweries, separately, are 
unable to exercise a proper influence in the legislative and public ad- 
ministration. It appears especially necessary for the brewing trade 
that its interests be vigorously and energetically prosecuted before 
the legislative and executive departments, as this branch of busi- 
ness is of considerable political and financial importance, exerting a 
direct as well as an indirect influence on political and social relations. 
The maneuvers of the temperance party should be defeated. 


At its first congress it appointed a committee to correspond 
with the Internal Revenue Bureau and a deputation to visit 
Washington to obtain a repeal of the order to tax beer brewed 
prior to the date the law took effect. 

At the third Beer Congress held October 3, 1863, it was re- 
ported that satisfactory interviews had been held with the Com- 
mittee on Ways and Means and that the tax on beer had been 
reduced from one dollar to sixty cents per barrel. Not satisfied 
with this they adopted a memorial asking Congress that the tax 
be further reduced to fifty cents per barrel. 

At the fourth congress in 1864 Mr. Lauer of the Washington 
Agitation Committee reported ‘“‘almost daily correspondence with 
members of Congress’ and “nine different visits to Washington.” 
It was reported that if they had not succeeded in getting the 
reduction asked for they had at least succeeded in preventing an 
increase in the rate of taxation which “would have resulted in 
the entire destruction of the brewing business, thus depriving 
our people of all classes of what is becoming the national bevez- 
age and the government of the handsome revenue which its 
manufacture yields.” 

At the fifth congress, October, 1865, the Commissioner of In- 
ternal Revenue was present representing the United States Gov- 
ernment. He spoke and pledged his efforts to “bring about a 
cordial understanding between the government and the trade.”’ 
Success was reported in inducing the Ways and Means Com- 
mittee to defer the fifty per cent increase in the tax on beer. 


FACTORS LEADING TO ORGANIZATION 57 


At the sixth congress in 1866 the Secretary declared: ‘No new 
imposition or increase of tax will be placed on malt liquors by the 
government without first communicating with this Association 
and getting their views upon it.” Mr. Lauer said: “We urge the 
necessity of electing only such men to office who are liberal and 
willing to give our beverages an equal chance.” 

That congress elected a committee “for the transaction of 
business in Washington with discretionary power in regard to all 
points to be agitated there.”’ The committee was to insist that 
breweries should not be subject to any particular restrictions and 
that the government should relieve them from the necessity of 
keeping books. 

At the seventh congress in 1867 the President claimed that 
the Association had always been successful. He said: “Only by 
union in brotherly love will it be possible to attain such results, 
guard against offensive laws, raise ourselves to be a large and 
widespread political power, and with confidence anticipate com- 
plete success in all our undertakings.” 

It adopted the following notable resolution of its Committee 
“On the menacing attitude of Temperance and Sabbatarian 
Fanatics toward the business.” 


Whereas, The action and influence of the temperance party is in 
direct opposition to the principles of individual freedom and polit- 
ical equality upon which our American Union is founded, therefore, 
Resolved, That we will use all means to stay the progress of this 
fanatical party, and to secure our individual rights as citizens, and 
that we will sustain no candidate, of whatever party, in any election, 
who is in any way disposed toward the total abstinence cause. 


This was more than two years before the Prohibition party 
was organized and the “Temperance party” referred to was the 
temperance men who were urging prohibitory legislation. 

Among its other resolutions were: 


That we will sustain all political papers advocating the principles 
of liberty: that we will use all efforts to make known the true social 
life of the Germans: that we find it necessary, in a business point 
of view, to patronize such men who will work hand in hand with 
us: that we will publish from time to time in the papers the names 
of the officers of the various Temperance Societies. 


By 1868 they had become still bolder in their dictatorial atti- 
tude toward the government and demanded certain changes in 
the proposed Internal Revenue and tariff laws and at the suc- 
ceeding congress in 1869 the Commissioner of Internal Revenue 
was eulogized for his efforts in their interest. 


58 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


At the 1868 congress, President Clausen explained their work 
in New York to be: 


To secure candidates for the Legislature, who would, without 
regard to political party, promote and protect the brewing interest. 
Neither means nor money were spared. The entire German popula- 
tion were enlisted. Editorials were published in sixty different news- 
papers ; 30,000 campaign circulars were distributed. 


They also resolved: 


That we will use all honorable means to deprive the political and 
puritanical temperance men of the power they have so long exercised 
in the councils of the political parties in this country, and that for 
that purpose we will support no candidate for any office who is 
identified with this element. 

Resolved, That we will patronize and sustain all papers advocating 
the same views entertained by us. 


Thus the aggressions of the organized liquor interests who 
were increasingly exercising an influence over politics and gov- 
ernment became a new and impelling factor in leading to the 
organization of the Prohibition party. 

D. The Growth of the Liquor Evil Durnng the Civil War. 
By the close of the Civil War it was realized that the drink evil 
had greatly increased. The better elements of the people had 
been engrossed, first in the issues leading up to the war and then 
in the war itself. In only five states were prohibitory laws 
remaining and they were not effectively enforced in most of 
those. On the other hand, the Internal Revenue Act and the 
organization of the liquor interests had given a tremendous im- 
petus to the liquor traffic. 

Drink had been prevalent in the army. Not only had many 
soldiers been destroyed by it but many others returned home 
with the alcoholic habit fastened upon them. Also after the War 
there was a moral reaction such as usually follows war. 

Another factor contributing to the increase of drinking customs 
was the influence of the immigrants who furnished a large 
proportion of the liquor. The foreign-born increased from 9.5 
per cent of the population in 1850 to 14.4 per cent in 1870. 
furthermore, they were beginning to exert political influence over 
office seekers and the leaders of political parties. In some states 
the immigrants could be voted in an incredibly short period after 
their arrival, thus providing votes wherewith corrupt politicians 
could control politics. 

The situation was becoming critical for the moral and political 


FACTORS LEADING TO ORGANIZATION 59 


welfare of the nation and earnest men saw that something must 
be done. 

E. A New Party for a New Issue. Another element of a 
different character which influenced the founders of the Pro- 
hibition party grew out of the experience through which they 
had just passed which had now become political history—the 
settlement of the slavery question. When the old parties had 
been demonstrated to be incapable of dealing with that issue be- 
cause of their divided constituencies those parties had been for- 
saken and the anti-slavery voters had united in a new party which 
had been elected to power. 

It was now thought that since slavery had been suppressed 
and its abolition forever established by Constitutional Amend- 
ment, it was time to reorganize upon another issue. It was not 
then anticipated that reconstruction would require a longer time 
than the four-year term of the administration beginning in 1860. 

They had not been without experience as to the tenacity with 
which old established parties hold on long after they have become 
devoid of vital issues, as, witness, the Whig party. But the effect 
of such experience had been to create disgust with such a condi- 
tion of affairs and there was quite a widespread feeling that the 
ideal way to conduct the politics of the Republic would be to 
organize new parties and create new alignments as new dominant 
issues arose; and after the object for which a party was organ- 
ized had been accomplished to let it dissolve to make way for a 
new party with a new issue. They were also deeply impressed 
by the influence which the Liberty and Free Soil parties had 
exerted in engendering a moral power in politics and in bringing 
the anti-slavery issue to the front. Many of those who helped to 
found the Prohibition party had been Abolitionists in the earlier 
days. ‘They realized the striking similarity between the slavery 
and liquor evils with respect to the constitutional powers and 
political methods in dealing with them. 

John Russell said that the example of the manner in which 
the first anti-slavery party was begun, together with a study of 
the political history which followed, was probably the most sug- 
gestive lesson which led to the formation of the Prohibition party. 
This example he described as: 


A small national convention assembled at Warsaw, New York, 
in 1840, driven almost to desperation by the perfidy of old party 
leaders, cast off the encumbrance of old political shackles and set 
up for themselves by adopting the subjoined resolution: “Resolved, 
That in our judgment every consideration of duty and expediency 


60 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


which ought to control the action of Christian Freemen requires of 
the Abolitionists of the United States to organize a distinct and in- 
dependent political party embracing all the necessary means of 
nominating candidates for office and sustaining them by public 
suffrage.” ° 

Certain it is that many of the early leaders of the Prohibition 
party received an inspiration from the history of the anti-slavery 
parties in which history many of themselves had participated. 
Furthermore, many of the Prohibition party speakers laid stress 
on the anti-slavery parallel.’ 

F, Revival of Temperance Organizations and Their Resolu- 
tions for Political Action. The immediate demand for the or- 
ganization of the party came as an expression of the widespread 
sentiment of the revivified* temperance organizations following 
the close of the Civil War. Immediately after the war was over 
temperance men began to turn their attention again to the liquor 
question, the settlement of which had been postponed by the domi- 
nancy of the slavery question. 

President Lincoln himself on the very day on which he was 
assassinated, in bidding Major Merwin farewell, after giving him 
instructions and before dispatching him as a special messenger to 
Horace Greeley, said: “After reconstruction the next great ques- 
tion will be the overthrow and suppression of the legalized liquor 
traffic.” 

Major Merwin, who had been an old friend and associate of 
Lincoln in the days of the Illinois campaign in 1855, and who 
had also been in frequent contact with the President in the course 
of his temperance work in the army, for which he had been espe- 
cially commissioned, within less than a month started to carry 
out President Lincoln’s purpose by attending a conference of the 
leading temperance men of the country in New York City which 
in May, 1865, issued the call for the Fifth National Temperance 
Convention. Major Merwin was Secretary of the group of 
leaders who issued the call and also became Secretary of the Fifth 
National Temperance Convention. This convention which met 
at Saratoga Springs in August, 1865, organized the National 
Temperance Society and Publication House. . 

The National Temperance Society and Publication House be- 
came for many years the outstanding organization for promoting 
the temperance propaganda by means of the printed page. Dur- 

6 Manuscript in John Russell’s Scrapbook. 

7 Samuel D. Hastings, History’s Parallel, The Analogy Between the Movement 


for the Abolition of Slavery and the Movement for the Prohibition of the Liquor 
Trafic; also, Wilber Colvin, ‘“Abolition—Prohibition” in Solid Shot. 


FACTORS LEADING TO ORGANIZATION 61 


ing the next forty years it distributed about 1,134,600,000 pages 
of literature. The moving spirit in the formation of plans for 
the Publication House was James Black, the first Prohibition 
candidate for President. 

A temperance organization which had phenomenal growth im- 
mediately following the war was the Independent Order of Good 
Templars. It had been organized in New York state in 1851 
and at the beginning of the war its membership was a little over 
50,000, but by 1869 it had mounted to nearly 400,000, and by 
1874 to 617,000, although in the latter year about one-half of 
that membership was in foreign lands. It had become, therefore, 
an organization with a strength unprecedented by a single organi- 
zation in temperance history. Its platform as adopted in 1859 
was: 


1. Total abstinence from all intoxicating liquor as a beverage. 

2. No license in any form, or under any circumstances, for the 
sale of such liquors as a beverage. 

3. The absolute Prohibition of the manufacture, importation and 
the sale of intoxicating liquors for such purposes,—prohibited by 
the will of the people, expressed in due form of law, with the pen- 
alties deserved for a crime of such enormity. 

4. The creation of a healthy public opinion upon the subject by 
the active dissemination of truth in all the modes known to an en- 
lightened philanthropy. 

5. The election of good, honest men to administer the law. 

6. Persistence in efforts to save individuals and communities 
from so direful a scourge, against all forms of opposition and dif- 
ficulty, until our success is complete and universal. 


The Sons of Temperance at this period had about 92,000 
members. In a number of states the State Temperance conven- 
tions again became influential for the cause. It was in the Tem- 
perance conventions and in the sessions of the Right Worthy 
Grand Lodge of Good Templars that the agitation for political 
action began. In nearly all of the conventions of this period this 
was a subject for discussion. 

In 1866 the New Hampshire State Temperance Convention 
evidenced its dissatisfaction with the quality of the enforcement 
of the prohibitory law of that state by adopting a resolution pro- 
claiming it the duty of temperance voters to run independent 
candidates when the existing parties do not put up acceptable 
candidates. 

In February, 1867, the Pennsylvania State Temperance Con- 
vention went farther and declared: 


62 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


If the adversaries of temperance shall continue to receive the 
aid and countenance of present political parties we shall not hesitate 
to break over political bonds and seek redress through the ballot- 
box. 

We promise to each other, and to the world, and to the Great 
Author of civil governments that, come what will to the national 
parties with which we are connected, we will not vote to give civil 
office to any person who is so ignorant or contemptuous of the duties 
of civil government as not to favor the application of its just powers 
to prohibit the traffic in intoxicating drink. 


In June of the same year, 1867, the Grand Lodge of Good 
Templars of Pennsylvania was in session just after the resolution 
of the United States Brewers’ Association upon political action 
was published, and passed the following acceptance of the 
brewers’ challenge: 


‘Resolved, That as the Beer Brewers’ Congress of the United 
States, at their session in Chicago, and the Liquor League of Phila- 
delphia, have declared that they “will sustain no candidate of what- 
ever party, in any election, who is in any way disposed toward the 
total abstinence cause,’ we do accept the issue thus made, and 
declare that we will not vote for men who countenance the liquor 
traffic, or degrade their official positions by the use of intoxicating 
liquors. 


In the National Temperance Advocate, the organ of the Na- 
tional Temperance Society, for October, 1867, there was a ring- 
ing editorial on “Temperance and Politicians” which closed with 
the following paragraphs: 


If no existing political party is ready to lift the ax, then the duty 
of temperance men is plain. We have no desire to enter the polit- 
ical field, though we are more than 500,000 or twice that number 
strong. But we do desire to abolish the liquor traffic; and as we 
will not with the right hand pledge ourselves to labor for its sup- 
pression, and with the left hand deposit our ballot for a man who 
is in favor of its continuance, should existing parties fail to give 
us a platform with a temperance plank in it on which we can stand, 
then we must build one for ourselves. .. . 

If, gentlemen (to the politicians), you have not moral courage 
enough to do right lest you lose the rum vote, then we are willing 
you should try rum, but we assure you it will be minus temperance. 


In May, 1868, the Right Worthy Grand Lodge of Good 
Templars in annual session at Richmond, Indiana, declared: 
Whereas, We are clearly convinced of the absolute necessity of 


political action in order to insure the ultimate and uniform success 
of the temperance reform; and 


FACTORS LEADING TO ORGANIZATION 63 


Whereas, It is manifest that neither of the now existing political 
parties will accept of our principles ; therefore 

Resolved, That we recommend to the temperance people of the 
country, aS soon as practicable, the organization of a national polit- 
ical party, which shall embrace, in its platform of principles, pro- 
hibition of the manufacture, importation, and sale of intoxicating 
liquors to be used as a beverage. 


At the sixth National Temperance Convention held at Cleve- 
land, Ohio, July, 1868, in answer to the challenge of the Brewers’ 
Congress, the following resolution was adopted: 


Whereas, The liquor dealers of our country have declared the 
traffic in intoxicating drinks to be a legitimate part of American 
commerce, and deny the right to prohibit or restrict the same, and 
through their leagues and Congress have repeatedly avowed their 
purpose to vote for no man in favor of total abstinence, and have 
constantly used their political power for the continuance of their 
trade, and have in the past received the countenance of political 
parties in support of the positions thus assumed; therefore, 
Resolved, That, in behalf of the public peace and welfare, we accept 
the issue, and will meet them at the polls in resistance to these 
iniquitous demands, 

Resolved, That temperance, having its political as well as moral 
aspects and duties, demands the persistent use of the ballot for its 
promotion; and the Convention urge the friends of the cause to 
refuse to vote for any candidate who denies the application of the 
just powers of civil government to the suppression of the liquor 
traffic, and exhort the friends of temperance, by every practicable 
method in their several localities, to secure righteous political action 
for the advancement of the cause. 


In August, 1868, the Michigan Temperance Convention 
resolved: 


That we recommend to the temperance people of this State, as soon 
as practicable after the Presidential election, the organization of a 
separate political party, comprising in its platform of principles the 
effective prohibition of the liquor traffic. 


The actual initiative for the organization of the National Pro- 
hibition party was taken at the session of the Right Worthy 
Grand Lodge of Good Templars at Oswego, New York, May 
Beer ooo.) Ltideclared: 


That we esteem the present as an auspicious period in the history 
of our political affairs for the inauguration of this movement, and 
therefore recommend the calling of a national convention for the 
purpose at an early day. 


64 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


During this session a meeting of those favoring independent 
political action for the promotion of Temperance was called. 
Jonathan H. Orne, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, who was the 
head of the Good Templars, was chosen Chairman, and Julius 
A. Spencer, of Cleveland, Ohio, Secretary. After discussion and 
deliberation it was resolved that a committee consisting of John 
Russell, of Detroit, Michigan; Prof. Daniel Wilkins, of Bloom- 
ington, Illinois; Julius A. Spencer, of Cleveland, Ohio; John N. 
Stearns, of New York City, and James Black, of Lancaster, 
Pennsylvania, should be appointed to prepare and issue a call for 
a National Prohibition Convention, for the purpose of organizing 
a National Prohibition party, to be constituted and to meet at 
such time and place as the committee might determine. 


Chapter IV 
THE FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION, 


The call for the convention of 1869 for the purpose of organ- 
izing for distinct political action for temperance was as follows: 


To the Friends of Temperance, Law, and Order in the United 
States: 

The moral, social, and political evils of intemperance and the 
non-enforcement of the liquor laws are so fearful and prominent, 
and the causes thereof are so intrenched and protected by govern- 
mental authority and party interest, that the suppression of these 
evils calls upon the friends of temperance, and the duties connected 
with home, religion, and public peace demand that old political 
ties and associations shall be sundered, and a distinct political party, 
with prohibition of the traffic in intoxicating drinks as the most 
prominent feature, should be organized. 

The distinctive political issues that have for years past interested 
the American people are now comparatively unimportant, or fully 
settled, and in this aspect the time is auspicious for a decided and 
practical effort to overcome the dread power of the liquor trade. 

The undersigned do therefore earnestly invite all friends of tem- 
perance and the enforcement of law, and favorable to distinct polit- 
ical action for the promotion of the same, to meet in general mass 
convention in the city of Chicago, on Wednesday, the Ist day of 
September, 1860, at 11 o’clock a. m., for the purpose of organizing 
for distinct political action for temperance. 

All Churches, Sunday-schools, and Temperance Societies of 
all names are requested to send delegates, and all persons favorable 
to this movement are invited to meet at the time and place above 
stated. 


Fifty-seven names were signed to the published call. In the 
list were many of the outstanding temperance leaders and moral 
reformers of the period. The first three names were the heads of 
the Sons of Temperance, Independent Order of Good Templars, 
and The Temple of Honor, respectively. 

Prior to the organization of the national party, state organi- 
zations had been started in three states, Michigan, Illinois, and 
Ohio. 

The first steps were taken ages t As early as January 


66 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


8, 1867, a preliminary conference was held in Detroit composed 
of about forty friends of prohibition from different parts of the 
state, convened by invitation of John Russell. Among the reso- 
lutions adopted was the following: 


Resolved, That it is the imperative duty of the people of this State 
to organize a political party pledged, among other wise governmental 
measures, to the enforcement of legal prohibition of the traffic in 
intoxicating liquors. 


It is to be observed that at this time Michigan had a prohibi- 
tory law on her statute book, and the call was to organize a party 
pledged to enforcement. 

A committee was appointed and authorized to call a convention. 
Nothing was done during the presidential election year 1868, but 
on January 26, 1869, a larger convention was held at Jackson, 
Michigan, which adopted a state platform. 

John Russell has been called the Father of the Prohibition 
Party and he richly deserves that honor. From the very be- 
ginning of the party throughout his long life he was its able and 
consistent advocate. He exhibited a clearness of thought and a 
consecration to the cause which has not been excelled. He was 
for many years the editor of the Peninsular Herald published at 
Detroit, which was the leading organ of the Party in the early 
years. The earliest statement of the need of party action was a 
report written by him as the Chairman of a Special Committee 
on Political Action, at the meeting of the Right Worthy Grand 
Lodge of Good Templars held at Detroit on May 30, 1867. 

This report which was adopted contained the following: 


By political action we mean the enactment of laws prohibiting 
the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, 
and the faithful execution of such laws by the proper executive of- 
ficers of the government. But the practical and difficult question 
to determine is by what methods these results shall be secured. A 
general and so far a correct answer is readily returned by saying, 
“Elect none but thorough temperance men to enact and administer 
the laws.” This, however, only brings us nearer the real difficulty 
without answering the question at all: for how, in view of the 
varied and complex relations of temperance men, are they to so 
combine their efforts as to accomplish this purpose? 

No doubt it is the duty of all who exercise the elective franchise 
to vote for those only who are committed to the policy here de- 
scribed, but it is idle to talk of duty without showing how it may 
be performed. Only two methods appear reasonable—either to 
insist upon the adoption of our principles by one or both the parties 


FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION ~ 67 


now in existence, or to organize a separate one, for from the nature 
of the case, measures of such magnitude can be rendered thoroughly, 
uniformly and permanently successful only by being avowed, dis- 
cussed and acted upon as the faith of a political party. 


Illinois was the first state to organize a party by the name of 
Prohibition party and adopt a platform. At the State Temper- ° 
ance Convention at Bloomington, December 9, 1868, at which 
about two hundred delegates were present, after a prolonged 
and heated debate it was voted to proceed to form a prohibition 
party. There was quite a strong opposition most of which came 
from Republicans who claimed that since their party had put 
down the Rebellion and abolished slavery it was a friend of all 
reforms and would therefore eventually prohibit the liquor traffic. 
The leader in securing the adoption of the resolution to organize 
was Dr. William Ross of Dover. He was ably seconded by a 
number of others. 

The platform contained the following: 


We acknowledge our dependence on God, and in His Name we 
set up our banners in the cause of temperance. 

The manufacture and sale of intoxicants is a great injury, and 
should be made a public crime. 

We oppose all license and favor Statutory Prohibition. 

This reformation relies mainly on the religious and high-toned 
moral character of its public advocates. 

We accept the issue made by the liquor dealers and beer con- 
gresses and will meet them at the polls. 


It is significant of the spirit which actuated the party through 
the years that the first plank of the first state platform acknowl- 
edged dependence upon God and declared that “In His name we 
set up our banners.’ * 

Ohio was the first state to have a ticket. The first distinc- 
tively Prohibition party ticket was in the spring of 1869 in a 
municipal election in Cleveland, Ohio, where a full municipal 
ticket was nominated March 24, at a political caucus of citizens 
called to combat the liquor traffic in that city. The ticket was 
headed by G. N. Abbey who received 1,049 votes. 

On April 24 and 25, 1869, a conference was held at Crestline, 
Ohio, which for two days discussed the question of forming a 
new party. At this meeting a call was made for a state conven- 
tion which was held at Mansfield, July 4, 1869. This convention 
nominated a full state ticket and appointed delegates to a national 
convention held at Chicago, September 1, which organized the 

1 Haggard, History of the Prohibition Party, p. 11. 


68 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


National Prohibition party. The nominee for Governor was the 
Rev. Samuel Scott, a prominent Methodist minister of the state. 
He was thus the first man to be voted for as a candidate for 
Governor of any state upon a ticket of the Prohibition party. 
Illinois had a ticket with candidates for State Treasurer and 
minor state offices, the only positions to be voted for that year.’ 

There were two other states, Maine and Minnesota, where 
there were temperance candidates in 1869, but they were re- 
garded as independent candidates rather than as affiliated with the 
new party. In Minnesota, Samuel Cobb was nominated. 

In Maine the people became aroused because, owing to the com- 
bination of the rum factions of the Republican and Democratic 
parties in the Legislature supported by the signatures of a Repub- 
lican Governor, two laws had been repealed in 1868, one a law 
making a prison sentence imperative without discretion by the 
court, which had been adopted in a referendum election by a 
vote of 19,358 to 5,536. The other law repealed was one pro- 
viding for a state police force to enforce the prohibitory laws, 
which made the enforcement much more effective. The repeal 
of these laws was followed by great laxity in enforcement. The 
Republican party in 1869, although adopting a prohibition plat- 
form, renominated the Governor. A third party was organized 
with N. G. Hichborn as the candidate for Governor. He polled 
4,935 votes and the Republican majority fell from 19,300 in 1868 
to 7,614 in 1869. The next year, 1870, the Temperance party 
nominated for Governor Sidney Perham, a strong advocate of 
prohibition. When the Republicans met they also nominated Mr. 
Perham, put a prohibition plank in their platform, became a pro- 
hibition party for the time being and brought about a better 
enforcement. 


THE ORGANIZING CONVENTION, 1869 


In response to the Call for the Convention nearly five hundred 
delegates from nineteen different states and the District of 
Columbia assembled in Farwell Hall, Chicago, September 1, 
1869. The Convention was called to order by D. R. Pershing, 
of Indiana, who read the Call. John Russell, of Michigan, was 
chosen Temporary Chairman and Julius A. Spencer, of Cleveland, 
Ohio, was chosen Temporary Secretary. Prayer was offered by 
the Rev. Dr. W. W. Evarts, of Chicago. 


2 George L. Case, The Prohibition Party. 


FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION _ 69 


The Temporary Chairman, John Russell, on being introduced, 
said in part: 


This convention, assembled under the Call which has been read 
in your hearing, is but a spontaneous expression of a deep and 
rapidly spreading conviction that the period has arrived for another 
forward movement in the great temperance reform. People who 
fear God and regard the social and moral welfare of their fellow- 
men are, in all parts of our country, beginning to realize the im- 
perious necessity for some stronger and more formal bond of union 
between those who favor legal prohibition of the liquor traffic. 
While separated by other political party lines, and absorbed in other 
issues, we are unable to act efficiently together for what we con- 
scientiously believe to be the most important moral and political 
movement of the age. Hence, the object of our meeting is to or- 
ganize a separate and independent political party advocating among 
its most important measures prohibition of the importation, manu- 
facture, and sale of all intoxicating drinks. 


A. Committee on Enrollment was appointed. There was a de- 
bate as to who should be members of the convention. It had been 
called for the express purpose, as stated in the Call, to organize 
for distinct political action, and it was to be a mass convention 
of people with that specific object. But when the convention 
met it was found that a considerable number had come for the 
purpose of opposing independent political action. It was decided, 
however, to allow all present to participate in the deliberations. 

Committees on Permanent Organization and on Platform and 
Resolutions were appointed, each composed of one delegate from 
each state, each state delegation naming its representatives on the 
committees. A Committee on Business was also appointed. 
Stephen B. Ransom of New Jersey was Chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Platform. 

One of the most prominent personalities of the convention was 
Gerrit Smith of New York, the celebrated millionaire Aboli- 
tionist and reformer, then seventy-two years of age. He had 
been a pioneer Abolitionist, having been the candidate of the 
radical Abolitionists for President both in 1848 and in 1856. 
He had been elected to Congress in 1852, but had resigned at the 
close of the first session. He had been an associate of John 
Brown. He was a noted philanthropist and a radical opponent 
of the liquor traffic as well as of slavery. He was a very im- 
pressive looking man and a very powerful speaker. 

Early in the convention he was called upon to give an address 
and spoke at length. He wrote most of the Address to the People 


70 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


which the Convention instructed the Committee on Resolutions 
to prepare. It followed quite largely the lines of his speech. 

The Committee on Permanent Organization recommended 
James Black of Pennsylvania for President of the Convention 
and he was unanimously elected. 

He reminded the members of the convention that they were 
standing at a historic point in the history of the temperance 
reform. He said that in all probability the gathering there would 
be referred to with commendation in future history. 

Mr. Black gave a comprehensive review of the successive stages 
in the development of the temperance movement from 1826 down 
to 1869. In particular, he summarized the successive positions 
taken by the national temperance conventions which had been 
veritable milestones in the Steady progress of the temperance 
movement down the century. 

He referred to the early societies which had been formed upon 
the basis of the pledge against ardent spirits. The rise of these 
societies on a large scale had begun in 1826. 

In 1833 the First National Temperance Convention had as- 
sembled in Philadelphia and declared that the traffic in alcoholic 
drinks was an immoral traffic. 

The Second National Temperance Convention in 1836 declared 
for total abstinence from the use of all intoxicating liquors as a 
beverage and from the making and furnishing of them to others. 
Experience had demonstrated that the pledge against ardent 
spirits was inadequate as men became drunkards on beverages to 
which the ardent spirit pledge did not apply, such as wine, beer 
and cider. 

The Third National Temperance Convention in 1841 empha- 
sized the duty of government to protect against public evils and 
declared that license should be universally abandoned. 

The Fourth Convention in 1851 declared for prohibition. It 
said that the evils of intemperance could not be prevented while 
the liquor traffic continued. It declared it was the right and duty 
of the people, in self-defense, by legislation and other suitable 
means, to bring the traffic to an end. 

The Fifth Convention in 1865 reaffirmed the foregoing prin- 
ciples and organized the National Temperance Society. 

The Sixth Convention in 1868 resolved to meet at the polls 
liquor’s challenge to politics and emphasized the right and duty to 
use the ballot for the promotion of temperance. 

Mr. Black, after reviewing the progressive steps of these con- 
ventions, urged that the logical result of these successive positions 


FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION 71 


was to “‘take the next step and disunite ourselves from those who 
have been drags upon us and form a temperance party, using the 
ballot now and henceforth.” 

When the Committee on Platform and Resolutions reported 
there was another debate lasting several hours, initiated by those 
hoping to prevent the organization of the party. They took excep- 
tion to the third resolution, which referred to the existing parties 
as opposing or ignoring the great and paramount question and as 
refusing to do anything toward the suppression of the rum trafhic. 
This resolution also provided for the organization of a new party. 

The debate was opened by a man who was the representative of 
the Cincinnati Commercial, a Republican paper of that city. 

Colonel John Sobieski, so far as known, with one exception the 
sole surviving member of the 1869 convention as this is written, 
has described the convention to the writer. He has had a re- 
markable career as the exiled heir to the throne of Poland, as a. 
soldier in the war for the American Union and in the war for 
Mexican freedom, and as a distinguished Prohibition and popular 
lecturer for over half a century. He says that the floor leader 
for those advocating the formation of the party was Dr. William 
Ross, of Illinois. Dr. Ross at that time was acknowledged to be 
second only to John B. Gough, the greatest temperance orator in 
America, and in many ways he was Gough’s superior. Among 
the other leading advocates of the new party were Jonathan H. 
Orne, of Massachusetts, the head of the Good Templars, Gerrit 
Smith, of New York, James Black and John Russell. 

Colonel Sobieski says that John Russell was the Apostle Paul 
of the whole movement. No matter how antagonistic an audience 
might be, let him address one thousand persons along the line of 
argument that he made at the Chicago Convention in 1869 and 
he would convince two-thirds of them. Colonel Sobieski de- 
scribes him as the most convincing speaker he has ever heard. 
He was not so much a great orator as a convincing speaker. 

Many of those who came to the Convention opposed to the 
formation of the new party were converted and the resolution to 
sever connection with the existing political parties and to form 
a National Prohibition party having for its primary object 
entire suppression of the liquor trafhc was adopted with great 
enthusiasm. 

John Russell said that the liquor question is a political ques- 
tion. Political parties are for the accomplishment of political 
purposes; and great political measures can only succeed through 
the agency of the party which espouses them. That has been the 


72 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


history of all political movements. Every government like ours 
is governed by party. The dominant party represents the people. 
Consequently we can never succeed with prohibition until some 
party endorses it, and that party becomes the successful one. 

Mr. French of Massachusetts said the Republican party, as a 
party, had done nothing for temperance, though Republicans in- 
dividually had. The Republican papers of Massachusetts, with 
but two or three exceptions, were opposed to prohibition. 

There was some discussion of the name for the new party. 
Gerrit Smith advocated the name of the Anti-Dramshop Party. 
He thought that this would cause their opponents to be called the 
Dramshop party thus stigmatizing them with a “suitable and in- 
famous name.’ ‘This name, however, did not appeal to most of 
the members of the Convention and the name of the National 
Temperance Party was voted. Later this was reconsidered and 
on motion of John Russell the name adopted was the National 
Prohibition Party.° 

Both of the Chicago daily papers, the Tribune and the Times, 
gave surprisingly large amounts of space to the convention. In 
the issues of September 2 and September 3, each of them gave 
from a page to a page and one-half per day to reports of the 
convention. This is more significant from the fact that at that 
time there were only eight pages in an issue. This indicates the 
wide popular interest in the action of the convention. While the 
news accounts seem to be accurate and fair, the new party was 
the subject of bitter editorial denunciation by the Chicago 
Tribune, the Republican paper. It ridiculed the entire idea of 
prohibition and asserted that the effect of the new party would 
be chiefly to draw votes from the Republicans and permit the 
despised Democrats to win. 

The Chicago Times editorially commented on the poor pros- 
pects of prohibition: 


When our Senators and Representatives come reeling to their 
desks in a state of intoxication and when all the avenues of political 
life are crowded with debauchees it is idle to hope that prohibitory 
laws could be enforced. 


THE PLATFORM OF 1869 


“Whereas, Protection and allegiance are reciprocal duties and every 
citizen who yields obedience to the just commands of his Govern- 


38 For a fuller report of the proceedings of the 1869 Convention, see James 
Black, Brief History of Prohibition and of the Prohibition Reform Party, 1880, 
48 pp. 


FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION _ 73 


ment is entitled to the full, free, and perfect protection of that 
Government in the enjoyment of personal security, personal liberty, 
and private property: and 

Whereas, The traffic in intoxicating drinks greatly impairs the per- 
sonal security and personal liberty of a large mass of citizens, and 
renders private property insecure: and, 

Whereas, The existing parties are hopelessly unwilling to adopt an 
adequate policy on this question, therefore, we, in National Con- 
vention assembled, as citizens of this free Republic, sharing in the 
duties and responsibilities of its Government, in discharge of a 
solemn duty we owe to our country and our race, unite in the fol- 
lowing declaration of principles: 

1. That while we acknowledge the pure patriotism and profound 
statesmanship of those patriots who laid the foundations of this 
Government, securing at once the rights of the States severally, 
and their inseparable union by the Federal Constitution, we would 
not merely garnish the sepulchres of our republican fathers, but 
we do hereby renew our solemn pledges of fealty to the imperishable 
principles of civil and religious liberty embodied in the Declaration 
of American Independence and our Federal Constitution. 

2. That the traffic in intoxicating beverages is a dishonor to 
Christian civilization, inimical to the best interests of society, a 
political wrong of unequalled enormity, subversive of the ordinary 
objects of government, not capable of being regulated or restrained 
by any system of license whatever: but imperatively demanding for 
its suppression effective legal prohibition, both by State and national 
legislation. 

3. That in view of this, and inasmuch as the existing political 
parties oppose or ignore this great and paramount question, and 
absolutely refuse to “do anything toward the suppression of the rum 
traffic, which is robbing the nation of its brightest intellects, destroy- 
ing internal prosperity, and rapidly undermining its very founda- 
tions, we are driven by an imperative sense of duty to sever our 
connection with these political parties, and organize ourselves into 
a National Prohibition Party, having for its primary object the 
entire suppression of the traffic in intoxicating drinks. 

4. That while we adopt the name of the National Prohibition 
Party, as expressive of our primary object, and while we denounce 
all repudiation of the public debt, and pledge fidelity to the prin- 
ciples of the, Declaration of Independence and the Federal Con- 
stitution, we deem it not expedient at present to give prominence to 
other political issues. 

5. That while we recognize the good providence of Almighty 
God in supervising the interests of this nation from its establish- 
ment to the present time, we would not, in organizing our party 
for the legal prohibition of the liquor traffic, forget that our re- 
liance for ultimate success must be upon the same Omnipotent 
Arm. 


74 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


6. That a central executive committee, of one from each State 
and Territory and the District of Columbia, be appointed by the 
chair, whose duty it shall be to take such action as, in their judg- 
ment, will best promote the interests of the party. 


This platform is worthy of study and analysis. Ina few con- 
densed paragraphs it incorporates much of the philosophy of pro- 
hibition. It is to be observed that the Prohibition party was the 
first organization founded upon the principle of National Pro- 
hibition. The Prohibition party was the pioneer in advocating 
this principle which after half a century was finally established 
in the Constitution of the United States. From the very be- 
ginning it kept true to its vision of National Prohibition. For 
many years other organizations confined themselves to personal 
temperance or compromised with license or local option, but the 
Prohibition party always stood firm for a national solution. At 
the same time the 1869 convention did not go beyond existing 
Constitutional bounds, so it advocated the cooperation of both 
National and State legislation to achieve prohibition. 

The basis for prohibition was a fivefold one, grounded upon 
Christian, social, economic, political, and governmental reasons. 

The liquor traffic was a dishonor to Christian civilization. This 
came to be realized increasingly by the churches as the years 
went on. 

It was inimical to the best interests of society. One of the 
leading studies of prohibition written forty years later showed 
that the social basis for prohibition was founded upon the conse- 
quences of the liquor traffic upon the fundamental social interests, 
which interests had been analyzed by contemporary sociologists.* 

An economic reason for prohibition was because the liquor 
traffic was destroying internal prosperity, it was undermining the 
very foundations of national prosperity and rendering private 
property insecure. 

It was a political wrong of unequaled enormity of which its 
ability to dominate the existing parties was sufficient evidence. 

It was subversive of the objects of government as represented 
by the Federal Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. 
Furthermore, the nature of the traffic was such as to be incapable 
of regulation or restraint by any system of license whatever. 

The reason for the coming into existence of the Prohibition 
party was because the existing political parties opposed or ignored 
this paramount question and refused to do anything toward the 
suppression of the traffic. It became necessary in the discharge 

4 See Harry S. Warner, Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem, 1908. 


FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION ~— 75 


of a solemn duty to the nation to sever connection with those 
parties and organize a national party whose object would be the 
entire suppression of the liquor traffic. There was thus implied 
the theory of government by political parties which is now ac- 
cepted by practically all political scientists. 

The liquor traffic was also described as robbing the nation of 
its brightest intellects, as undermining the foundations of national 
prosperity, as impairing the personal security and personal liberty 
of a large mass of citizens and as rendering private property in- 
secure. Inasmuch as it is a primary object of government to 
protect person and property, government cannot adequately per- 
form its functions so long as it permits the liquor traffic. 

It is to be observed that the platform, like that of the Repub- 
licans in 1856, was substantially a single issue platform, the only 
additional provision having been that it denounced the repudiation 
of the public debt. 

It is significant that in the very beginning the Prohibition party 
placed itself on the sound position of recognizing the sacredness 
of the obligations of the government. 

It should be observed also that in this first platform, as in 
every succeeding national Prohibition platform, save one, there 
was a recognition of Almighty God. The Prohibitionists ac- 
knowledged “that their reliance for ultimate success must be upon 
the Omnipotent Arm. 


ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE 


The following “Address to the People of the United States” 
was prepared by the Hon. Gerrit Smith, of New York, and 
became the first official document of the new party. Its theory 
of the sphere of government is more limited than that which 
later characterized the Party but it is so significant that it is here 
given almost in full. 


Slavery is gone, but drunkenness stays. There are two millions 
of drunkards in our Jand. Counting their wives and children, and 
parents and brothers and sisters, there are at least 5,000,000 of 
people involved in the miseries of drunkenness. One drunkard in 
a family is enough to make the whole family miserable. Our in- 
voluntary slaves are set free, but our millions of voluntary slaves 
still clang their chains. The lot of the literal slave, of him whom 
others have enslaved, is indeed a hard one: nevertheless it is a para- 
dise compared with the lot of him who has enslaved himself— 
especially of him who has enslaved himself to alcohol. The noblest 


76 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of souls may dwell beneath chains which others have imposed, but . 
self-imposed chains strike debasement through and through the 
soul. Happy, too, may the literal slave be if only he has kept his 
inner man—his essential self—unconquered; but no outward ad- 
vantages can bring happiness to the victim of alcohol—to him who 
has killed his own soul. Then, too, the literal slave does harm to 
none, whilst the self-made slave of whom we speak is a curse to his 
kindred, a burden upon all, and in no small share of the cases a 
terror to all. 

What can we do towards saving our millions of drunkards? Just 
what we have been doing. We are to continue the power of per- 
suasion with them, and the power of prayer to God for them. And 
what can we do to prevent the recruiting of the ever rapidly thicken- 
ing ranks of drunkenness? None of the recruits come from those 
who abstain from intoxicating .drinks. The “temperate drinkers” 
furnish all. Our work, therefore, at this point, is to warn and 
beseech the rising youth to take not the first step in the pathway, 
the second in which sinks the unwary and ill-fated traveller in 
drunkenness. It is, in other words, to warn and beseech them to 
“Touch not, taste not, handle not” the drinks which transmute more 
than one-tenth of the “temperate drinkers” into drunkards. It is, 
we might add, to persuade them—yes, and the old as well as the 
young—that there is no sectirity from drunkenness but total ab- 
stinence from all intoxicating drinks. Total abstainers from intoxi- 
cating drinks, you, and you only, are safe from this greatest calamity, 
this most sweeping ruin. “A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten 
thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.” God 
be praised that this priceless safety is obtained by means so simple; 
and that the application of these means is attended with pleasure 
instead of pain, with comfort instead of discomfort. 

We proceed to ask whether Government may be called upon to 
advance the cause of temperance. Whilst many say that it may, 
many say that it may not, and there is no need in this case of calling 
upon it to exercise doubtful, or even any reasonably doubtful, 
powers. We have no occasion to question the conclusion of those 
who hold that Government has not the right to espouse the temper- 
ance reform or any other reform. For two sufficient reasons, never- 
theless, we call upon the Government to suppress the dramshop. 

First. The province of Government being to protect person and 
property, it is clearly its duty to forbid the existence of the dram- 
shop. That abomination is the great peril to person and property: 
for it is the great manufactory, not of paupers only, but also of 
incendiaries, madmen, and murderers. Nota few of its frequenters 
go forth from it to burn or kill. Government is surely very false 
to its trust, and very delinquent in its duty, in licensing or permitting 
the dramshop. By this falseness and delinquency it proves itself 
unworthy to be the constituted protector of the persons and property 


FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION 77 


of its subjects—unworthy, indeed, the name of civil government. 

Second. ‘The other reason for our calling on Government to rid 
the land of the dramshop is that the cause of temperance would, 
though incidentally, be nevertheless benefited by this measure for 
protecting person and property. To those who deny that Govern- 
ment has the right to undertake to help the cause of temperance, we 
reply that, however this may be, this cause has nevertheless most 
certainly the right of being incidentally benefited by any of the 
confessedly legitimate actions of Government. Moreover, if it must 
be admitted that Government has no right to make the benefiting of 
the cause of temperance one of its objects, it nevertheless must also 
be admitted that Government has no right to hinder that cause— 
most emphatically no right to stop its way with the insuperable 
obstacle of the dramshop. 

But it is said that the Government will not respond to the call to 
suppress the dramshop unless it come from a great political party. 
This is but too probable, notwithstanding that, in all matters which 
involve questions of fundamental morality, the ruler is bound to 
consult, not the will of the people, but the will of God. “The ruler,” 
say the Scriptures, “is the minister of God.” He is, whether it does 
or does not please the people, to act in accordance with the Divine 
will. But too possible, also, is it that both of our existing political 
parties are in such bondage to the interests and policies which cluster 
around and uphold the dramshop, that neither of them will ever 
consent to demand its suppression. Hence it is that we are as- 
sembled in this convention, to declare the necessity for’a new organi- 
zation, and to call upon our countrymen, North and South, East 
and West, to come into it. And our call is not to the friends of 
temperance only. It is also to all the friends of righteous govern- 
ment—to all who would have Government faithful to its duty to 
protect person and property. 

Just here, where we have been speaking of the high and sacred 
mission of Government, is the place to enter our most earnest and 
solemn protest against the scheme called “local option” in the scheme 
for government, allowing the dramshop in those localities which 
like it and disallowing it in those localities which do not like it. 
Would the friends of this “local option” have it adopted in the case 
of theft, or of getting goods under false pretenses? Certainly not. 
They would have Government forbid these offenses everywhere, and 
entirely irrespective of the popular choice anywhere. Why, then, 
would they have the action of government in regard to dram-selling 
turn on the popular will? 

These offenses, in comparison of their effects with its, sink into 
mere peccadilloes by the side of dram-selling. Why, then, are they 
so inconsistent as to have Government forbid these and spare it? 
The solution of this inconsistency is, that while people are educated 
(and chiefly, in such cases, by the mighty educating power of the 


78 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


law) to regard these offenses as crimes, they can hardly be brought 
to regard as criminal that which is shielded by the laws, and is so 
far made sacred. This conditioning the action of Government on 
the popular will in the case of so great a crime as dram-selling: this 
sinking of Government from its Divine commission and absolute 
authority into a mere servant and tool—could not fail to go far to 
cheapen and disgrace it, and render it ineffective against all wrongs. 
Government should not be so degraded. On the contrary, it should 
be so magnified that not slavery, nor dram-selling, nor indeed any 
other crime, could make headway under its forms. By the way, 
there is nothing that the people more need than a higher esteem 
of the sublime and sacred functions of Government. But this can 
come only from right action on the part of Government. Let the 
people see it sweep away the dramshop, and it will at once wear a 
new aspect in their eyes, and*command their highest esteem; and 
then, too, will the dramshop, in the light of this indignant action of 
the Government against it, appear far more abominable. 

We are not unaware of the well-nigh insuperable obstacles in 
the way of building up an independent political party in the face 
of long-established political parties. Men quit such parties with 
great reluctance. A very lamentable evil is the education of the 
people into the belief that a permanent political party is a great 
good: and, therefore, that such a party as the Republican or Demo- 
cratic ought not to be broken up. But a permanent political party 
with the constant tendency of any such party to destruction is a 
heavy curse, for it plants itself with great, and too frequently with 
invincible, power in the way of all progress, and clings for its own 
existence to the wrongs with which it is identified. No other but 
temporary political parties are justifiable—no other but as occasions 
call for. Right was it in Englishmen to form an anti-slavery party, 
and right was it in them when they had disposed of slavery to form 
an anti-corn-law party: and right also is it in them to form, as they 
are now doing, an anti-dramshop party. Right was it in Americans 
to form an anti-slavery party, and right is it now for them to 
pass on from the overthrow of slavery to an anti-dramshop party. 
We give this name to our party because none more suitable—none 
more significant nor more truly descriptive could be given to it. One 
argument in favor of our taking this name of the Anti-Dramshop 
Party is that it leaves to our opponents, and will fasten upon them, 
their manifestly and deeply infamous name of the ‘‘Dramshop”’ 
Party. We speak of them as one party because they will manifestly 
tend to such unity as fast as the true temperance men and friends 
of righteous civil government shall forsake their old parties to join 
our new one. The American anti-dramshop party and the Ameri- 
can dramshop party will, from this good hour, go on to divide be- 
tween themselves the whole American people. 

Many believe that instead of forming a new political party, we 


FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION _ 79 


should remain in our old ones, and put up here and there, now and 
then, anti-dramshop men, against the dramshop candidates presented 
to us. Bolting at regular nominations, and making other nomina- 
tions in their stead, is a good expedient where the object is to select 
men from the party who will represent its fundamental principles 
and essential character. But the expedient is a poor one, and must 
ever be unsuccessful where the object is to select men from the 
party who will go counter to those principles and that character. 
For years Abolitionists clung to their pro-slavery parties and sought 
(alas, how vainly) to revolutionize them by accepting now and then, 
here and there, a nomination. No less vain will be any similar at- 
tempts to revolutionize our dramshop parties. What if some of 
their members shall occasionally vote against the regular nomina- 
tions? It will avail nothing toward changing the current and char- 
acter of the parties. Innumerable eddies in the Niagara are, in 
their little or larger circles, turning portions of it up stream. So 
long as the present parties are rum-parties, and they will be until 
they are broken up, any little counter movements within them for 
temperance will be of no account. The mighty rum torrent will 
bear all before it; and, what is more, even the friends of temper- 
ance in these parties will but harm instead of help the cause, for 
by continuing their names to these parties they will continue to 
strengthen the rum-power—these parties being the most efficient 
servants of that power. Of course, we readily admit that members 
of political parties can remain in them and yet work successfully to 
change many things in them. Nevertheless, they cannot change their 
ingrained and essential character. The parties will break up ere 
such changes can take place. A pro-slavery political party cannot 
become an anti-slavery party. It will break up before it can become 
the subject of so radical a change. And, indeed, it is so even in 
the case of an ecclesiastical party. The Methodist, Baptist, and 
Presbyterian Churches preferred being scattered into fragments to 
becoming anti-slavery. Our present political parties may consent 
to undergo changes in respect to tariffs, internal improvements and 
many other things: but they cannot give up their vital connections 
with the dramshop without giving up their existence—ay! and 
rum-soaked parties they cannot fail to be as long as they continue 
to be parties. And those of their members who would escape from 
their guilty responsibility for the dramshop and its horrid work 
cannot do so without sundering their connections with them. To all 
such penitent ones our new party will be a welcome and a happy 
refuge. 

We shall, of course, have to encounter, continually and every- 
where, the utter but effective falsehood that in asking Government 
to put away the dramshop we are asking it to enact that most odious 
of all laws—a sumptuary law. How invidious as well as disingenu- 
ous to confound with a sumptuary law a law enacted for the protec- 


80 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


tion of society from the dramshop, the manufactory of madmen and 
murderers—from peril to person and property far greater than 
the sum total of all the other perils which they incur! In the legisla- 
tion we call for we do not propose, as does the sumptuary law, to 
interfere with the household. We do not propose the searching 
of families, nor the hindering of them from drinking their domestic 
drinks or eating their spoiled meats. But we do propose that they 
shall be effectually debarred from bringing their dram-bottles into 
the public markets, as they are from bringing into it such meats. 
As temperance men we are opposed to all intoxicating drinks any 
and everywhere. As such we would do all in our power to persuade 
every home to relieve itself of the presence of this preeminent de- 
stroyer of the peace of the home. As temperance men we aim to 
make millions of rum-ruined and unutterably wretched homes the 
paradise they would have been but for this evil presence—the para- 
dise they would have been had not the devil entered them. But 
nothing of all this domestic beauty and blessedness will be the 
object of our new political organization. ‘This organization will 
war upon rum-selling only. Its war, however, will be upon all 
rum-selling—upon that in the fashionable as well as the unfashion- 
able hotel: upon that in the gilded parlor as well as that in the 
dirtestyden. i hen. 

A very common objection to forming the new party is that, its 
members being required to agree in but one thing, it will therefore 
be but a one-idea party. Most absurd objection! And yet it has 
proved itself to be no less widely deluding than deeply absurd. The 
members neither of the Democratic nor of the Republican party are 
required to agree in so much as one thing; and hence, by this logic, 
which makes the new party only a one-idea party, the other parties 
are indeed no-idea parties. But the fact is that within these no- 
idea parties are many ideas, and some of them warmly cherished. 
Within the new party will doubtless be quite as many and quite 
as tenaciously held ideas as there are in either of the other parties. 
Moreover, the central idea, to which it expressly commits itself, 
being the duty of the Government to protect, bravely and faithfully, 
the persons and property of its subjects, and especially from the 
dramshops, which preeminently imperil them, it may reasonably 
be expected that the party—certainly the great majority of its mem- 
bers—will adopt many an idea which is worthy to be associated 
with its grand central idea. And thus we conclude that our new 
party will not only not lack objects to pursue and ends to secure, 
but that these objects and ends will be eminently wise and proper. 

And then, too, as it begins in a brave and uncompromising regard 
for the right, and strikes its very first blow at the mightiest power 
in the land—the rum-power—and takes its place in a minority 
so small as to incur the scorn and ridicule of the majority, the party 
may well hope to be distinguished, not only for the wisdom of its 


FIRST NATIONAL PROHIBITION CONVENTION _ 81 


measures, but for the courage and integrity with which it will adopt 
and maintain them. What if our new party were to accomplish 
nothing more for the protection of person and property—that first, 
if not, indeed, the sole work of Government—than shutting up the 
dramshops? Would not this be doing immeasurably more for the 
country than all which the Democratic and Republican parties aim 
at? The dramshop suppressed, this great feeder of the vice of 
intemperance no longer in being, the task of making men sober 
would be a comparatively easy one. But the good of being a sober 
people consists not alone in the comfort and pleasure of soberness. 
It is a good which begets well-nigh every other good. When the 
voters of our country, a small portion of whom are drunkards, shall 
be sober, our Government will, in all its departments, be sober, 
honest, and wise—a change which cannot come so long as the dram- 
shop is left to its great part in fashioning the character of both the 
people and the Government. 

We are urged to wait until the political parties have disposed of 
other and more important matters before we organize politically 
against the dramshop. But these parties have nothing in hand that 
is at all so important as the shutting up of the dramshop. ... 

Our words are ended. We may not succeed in shutting up the 
dramshop, but we will work very faithfully and very hopefully to 
this end. And then, even though we shall have utterly failed of 
our object, and the dramshop shall remain wide and deep and 
fixed a curse upon poor humanity as ever, a great success will never- 
theless be ours—the great success of having done our duty. 


Chapter V 
THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 


The more optimistic members of the convention of 1869 ex- 
pected the new party to make a rapid growth. They thought that 
the times were propitious, the war was over and there were no 
distracting issues before the people. They thought that with such 
a righteous purpose the party was destined to lead the nation 
onward to unprecedented moral achievements. 

But after the party was launched it was not easy sailing. In 
the first place, it did not have the means or agencies to get its 
message to the people. Most of what was done was volunteer, 
self-sacrificing work of the committeemen and a few vitally in- 
terested. Much of the agitation was conducted through the State 
and National Temperance Conventions and the existing fraternal 
orders, the Good Templars and Sons of Temperance, especially 
through the Good Templar order which in its national meetings 
for five successive years passed resolutions favoring political 
party action. 

It had the opposition of the liquor traffic as a matter of course. 
It also had the opposition of the political protectors of the liquor 
traffic, the party organizations. Party managers, always sen- 
sitive to any influence which will weaken the solidarity of the 
party, were interested in preventing the new party from coming 
to the front. Most of the newspapers were dominated by partisan 
influence and their policy was to ignore or ridicule. 

Another difficulty was the division among the temperance 
people. There was a large group who did not recognize the 
political phase of the question. All they saw was the personal 
aspect. If aman kept from drink himself that was sufficient. 
There were a good many of this class in the temperance orders. 
They were total abstainers themselves and interested in reclaim- 
ing individuals from drink, but that was as far as their interest 
went. 

There was another large group who saw no farther than their 
own community. These men might be interested in a local option 
campaign but had no vision beyond. They had no grasp of the 


larger national factors in the problem. 
82 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 83 


Of those who recognized the need of some kind of political 
action, there were three classes: 

First, those who were wedded to the Republican party and be- 
lieved that as it had saved the Union and destroyed slavery it 
would sooner or later take up prohibition. 

A second class thought that instead of forming a new party the 
temperance men should organize a block of temperance votes 
which should serve as a balance of power to be swung if necessary 
now to a candidate of one party, and now to a candidate of 
another party. The members of this group were inclined to be 
opportunistic. They might desire prohibition if they could get 
it, but they were more likely to spend their energies on local 
option or some kind of restriction. 

The third group comprised the Prohibitionists, who believed a 
political party was necessary. Even though they had right, facts, 
logic and argument on their side it was a tremendous task to 
reach, convert and organize even those with some sort of temper- 
ance sympathy. The leaders of the party developed the argument, 
but they were not able to reach the people with the argument in a 
big enough way to win votes in large numbers. Throughout its 
history the Prohibition party had not lacked for facts or argu- 
ment or logic or a correct solution, or a righteous cause or able 
advocates. What it has lacked more than anything else has been 
an adequate nation-sweeping publicity campaign to get its mes- 
sage to the voters in a continuous and compelling manner. 

The Chicago convention of 1869 did succeed in creating quite 
a little discussion and was followed by the organization of the 
party in several states. On December 22, 1869, a New York 
State Mass Temperance Convention held at Syracuse resolved to 
organize a New York State Anti-Dramshop party. Gerrit 
Smith and E. C. Delavan, who for thirty years had been an out- 
standing temperance leader of the state, each subscribed $1,000. 

In January, 1870, the organization was effected. The can- 
didate for Governor was Myron H. Clark who had been elected 
Governor sixteen years before and in whose administration the 
New York prohibitory law had been passed. 

The same month, the supporters of prohibition in New Hamp- 
shire, aroused because of the poor administration of the pro- 
hibitory law in that state, voted to put up a new party ticket. 
L, D. Barrows was the nominee for Governor. 

It was in Massachusetts that the greatest progress was made 
that year. The nominee for Governor was Wendell Phillips, the 
foremost orator of the anti-slavery movement. While many 


84 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


other participants in that movement, after slavery was abolished, 
quietly folded their hands in self-satisfaction with the achieve- 
ments of the past, Wendell Phillips went forward to new reforms. 
He had long been interested in temperance, labor reform, and 
woman suffrage. On September 4, 1870, he was nominated for 
Governor by the Prohibition party and, four days later, by the 
Labor Reform party. His acceptance speech attracted wide at- 
tention. In it he said: 


Many considerations—and among them the safety and success 
of republican institutions—bid us put forth the full power of the 
law to shut up dramshops. We have never yet ruled a great city 
on the principle of self-government. Republican institutions under- 
mined by intemperance are obliged to confess that they have never 
governed a great city here, on the basis of universal suffrage, in 
such way as to preserve order, protect life, and secure free 
BDeechiay. atin 

As temperance men you are bound to quit the Republican party, 
since it has deceived you more than once. Any prohibitionist who 
adheres to it proclaims beforehand his willingness to be cheated, and 
so far as political action is concerned betrays his principles. The 
Republican party deserves our gratitude. It has achieved great 
results. It will deserve our support whenever it grapples with our 
present living difficulties. A party must live on present living serv- 
ice, not on laurels, however well earned. ... The only bulwark 
against the dangers of intemperance is Prohibition. More than 30 
years of experience have convinced me, and as wise an experience 
has taught you, that this can only be secured by means of a distinct 
political organization. 


The first two planks of the Massachusetts Platform of 1870 
were as follows: 


Resolved, That the policy of the State toward the liquor traffic 
affects every political interest: that it affects production, expendi- 
ture, taxation, pauperism, prostitution, the peace of the streets, the 
repression of crime, the protection of person and property, the in- 
terests of labor, the purity of the ballot, the success if not the exist- 
ence of republican government. 

Resolved, That a policy which thus affects every political interest 
ought to be decided by the people and should by common consent 
have precedence over other issues. 


In a campaign pamphlet issued in the Massachusetts campaign 
of 1870 the political aspects were emphasized in a series of 
paragraphs from which the foilowing is an extract. The plat- 
form and the pamphlet indicate that there was a clear compre- 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 85 


hension that the liquor question was a distinctly political question 
of preeminent importance. 


1. The first of all political objects is the support of the State. 
This depends on men. Their physical development is, therefore, 
the first of political interests. The Board of State Charities tells us 
that alcohol vitiates human stock. It tells us also that it has that 
effect on the moderate drinker as well as on the drunkard. If this 
be so, an anti-dramshop issue is an important political issue. 

2. Of the political interests of a State second in order, but 
supreme in value, stands the character of its citizens. Bad citizens 
are not only worthless but dangerous. The welfare of any State— 
the existence of a republic—depends on the character of its citizens. 

The dramshop system is a common-school system of vice. It 
makes worthless, dangerous, disorderly, unproductive citizens. For 
this reason an anti-dramshop issue is more important than other 
party issues and should take their place. 

3. Material prosperity is a political interest. Dramshops diminish 
production, and, therefore, impoverish the State. In one of our 
most extensive manufactories this diminution, under a dramshop 
policy, was more than 14 per cent. 

4. Dramshops not only diminish production but increase expendi- 
tures. The people of the United States pay these shops more than 
five hundred millions annually. In its bearing on national wealth 
the anti-dramshop issue is, therefore, more important than other 
political issues. 

s. The preservation of the peace is a political interest. In large 
cities it is a great part of the work of the government. 

Breaches of the peace are caused chiefly by dramshops. So are 
three-fourths of the arrests. Drink makes their customers noisy 
and quarrelsome and the police must then arrest them. ... An 
issue against a system which breaks the peace and in favor of a 
system which preserves it is more important than any other pending 
political issue. 

6. Protection to person and property is a political interest. Dram- 
shops diminish that protection. They cause three-fourths of the 
offenses against person and property and to that extent lessen their 
security. Dramshops corrupt the purity of the ballot and thus sap 
the basis of government. 

An issue that would preserve the ballot from “that source of 
corruption and give threefold security to person and property is 
more political and more important than Democratic or Republican 
PSSIIES sehr, 3 

7. Repression of pauperism and 

8. Suppression of brothels and gaming houses are political in- 
terests. 

9. Next to the character of its citizens the most important political 


86 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


interest of a state is the interest of labor. Labor is the lifeblood 
of the state. 

The dramshop policy enslaves labor. It subjects wages to the 
will of the employer and then preys upon its earnings. It robs the 
laboring poor of food, fuel, clothing and shelter. 

An issue that will redeem labor from this source of degradation 
is incomparably more important than Republican or Democratic is- 
sues and should take their place. 

Rejecting all that is not strictly political and confining ourselves 
to the ordinary objects of government, we find: 

Ist. that dramshops vitiate human stock. 

2nd. that they make worthless citizens. 

3rd. that they increase taxes and diminish taxpayers. 

4th. that they diminish productive industry. 

Sth. that they cost in cash five hundred millions annually. 

6th. that they corrupt the purity of the ballot. 

7th. that they endanger the public peace. 

Sth. that they make gaming houses and brothels, paupers and 

criminals. 

oth. that they enslave labor and make its wages and its hours of 

service depend on the will of the employer. 

1oth. that they lessen the protection of person and property. 

If the dramshops thus obstruct all the ordinary objects of govern- 
ment, an issue against them is more political and incomparably more 
important than any existing party issue. 


In answer to the objection, “But can we not fight the battle 
inside the Republican party?” the pamphlet said: 


We have tried the inside fight. It gives us a compromise Governor 
and Constable—a Legislature that enacts free trade in fermented 
liquors—judges that impose ten-dollar fines and a Commissioner 
that buys his liquors of C. A. Richards. 

It is the inside fight that thus corrupts law, impairs its force, 
weakens its friends, strengthens its enemies and turns the tide of 
battle against us. 

The inside fight corrupts the legislators as well as executors of 
the law. A prohibitionist elected as a Republican has two masters. 
He compromises and defeats us on details. At best he is but half 
ours and at worst he is worse than an open enemy. 

As it is, the battle is against us. The inside fight is a failure. 

Why are our official representatives thus failures? Because they 
represent a divided party. Because they owe a divided allegiance. 
Because they are tied to the average sentiment of their party, half 
license and half prohibition. The same man, elected or appointed 
by an independent prohibitory party would be as true as steel. 

Our only choice, therefore, is between death and independent 
political action. 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 87 


The prohibitory law of Massachusetts had been having a very 
stormy time. Enacted in 1852, it was repealed in 1868 and re- 
enacted in 1869. But the legislature of 1870 weakened it by per- 
mitting the manufacture and sale of malt liquors. This aroused 
the people and Wendell Phillips received 21,946 votes. The 
Prohibition candidate for Lieutenant-Governor received 8,692 
votes, which was regarded as the strength of the new party. The 
next year the prohibition of malt liquors was restored to the 
law except that cities and towns were given local option on malt 
liquors, enabling those which voted to license the traffic in malt 
liquors to be exempt from the state prohibitory policy. In 1873 
the local option provision was repealed, thus making the pro- 
hibition cover the entire state again. But in 1875 prohibition 
was repealed and license was again enacted, which became the 
permanent policy of the state down to national prohibition. 

In 1869 only one state had a Prohibition candidate for Gov- 
ernor, Ohio, which reported 696 votes. In 1870 there were six 
states where there were Prohibition tickets. The votes reported 
were: Illinois, 3,712; Massachusetts (Lieutenant-Governor), 
8,692; Michigan, 2,170; New Hampshire, 1,167; New York, 
1,459; Ohio, 2,812; a total of 20,012. 

In 1871, an off year in most states, there were still six states 
which had tickets, but of these two were new ones which were 
added, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. 

The addition of Pennsylvania is more significant in view of the 
fact that the year before, 1870, at a state convention, the proposi- 
tion to form a separate political party had been the subject of a 
long and animated discussion. It was voted down, 55 to 121, 
and a resolution was adopted recommending the friends of tem- 
perance to try the expedient of local option and to labor for the 
accomplishment of this purpose through existing political parties. 
Within five years this policy brought its bitter retribution in the 
sweeping away of all that had been gained. 

In Massachusetts the candidate for Governor in 1871 was 
Judge Robert C. Pitman. He had served two terms in the State 
Senate and had been largely responsible for the reenactment of 
the prohibitory law in 1869. He was later (1877) the author of 
one of the best books upon prohibition which has ever been 
written, Alcohol and the State. 

The first party Prohibitionist to be elected to legislative office 
was elected that year. The Reverend George H. Vibbert was 
elected a member of the Massachusetts Legislature. For over 


88 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


forty years thereafter he was prominent as a temperance and 
prohibition lecturer. 

Ohio’s vote showed a large rate of increase for the three suc- 
cessive years. The candidate for Governor in 1871 was Gideon 
T. Stewart. 


THE FIRST NOMINATING CONVENTION 


The Party having been started over three years before the 
presidential election, some of its opponents had prophesied that 
it would never nominate a ticket. On December 9, 1871, the call 
was issued for a National Convention to be held at Columbus, 
Ohio, February 22, 1872, “for the purpose of putting in nomina- 
tion candidates for the office of President and Vice-President of 
the United States.”’ 

The convention was called to order by John Russell, Chairman 
of the National Committee. Hon. Henry Fish, of Michigan, was 
chosen Temporary Chairman. An eloquent address of welcome 
was delivered by Gideon T. Stewart, of Norwalk, Ohio, the Sec- 
retary of the National Committee. The following is an extract: 


Corruption riots at the ballot-box, in the halls of legislation, and 
invades even the sanctuaries of justice. The dramshop is the 
supreme political power in the nation, and before it rulers and 
people, parties and politicians, bow the knee in servile homage and 
base subserviency. Our republic is fast verging to the precipice over 
which all the old republics reeled to destruction. It must be speedily 
saved, or it will be swiftly lost. In the last twelve years the manu- 
facture and traffic in intoxicating liquors has more than doubled in 
magnitude: all their crimes and curses have waxed in proportion. 
Every hour the moral night grows thicker and darker upon the 
nation, pierced only by the funeral bells of the slain and the wail- 
ings of the desolate. The earth is sick of slaughter. The heavens 
are tired of weeping over the abominations and desolations of this 
traffic. Oh! if we still hold our arms in supineness: if we yet 
doubt, and pause, and hesitate, and linger, it would seem that the 
dead themselves, the murdered and buried victims of the traffic, 
will rend their sepulchres and do the work for us. 

You have come with the only standard unfurled that can rescue 
the republic and save the people, that of the total prohibition of 
the manufacture, importation and traffic of intoxicating beverages, 
as high crimes against God and man. 


Simeon B. Chase, of Pennsylvania, was elected Permanent 
Chairman. He said, in part: 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 89 


No sinister motive can have induced the attendance of the mem- 
bers of this Convention. Love for the cause: love for humanity: a 
desire to sustain and perpetuate the institutions of our country and 
hand them down unsullied to our posterity, alone could have in- 
fluenced you to come to Columbus today. This is an important 
convention because our object is to strike at an enemy that 1s war- 
ring against the vitality of the institutions of our country. 

Some mien say that it is not a political question, and cannot legiti- 
mately be made one. Political parties are certainly organized for 
the purpose of preserving the institutions of our country. ‘That 
must be their great and grand aim. If, then, we have an enemy 
that is striking at the vitals of these institutions, and none of the 
political parties are doing anything to destroy that enemy, then 
certainly there is a demand for a new organization. If in our coun- 
try we have a sentiment that believes that the liquor traffic is injuring 
the peace, the good order, the power, and the vitality of our state 
or nation: if we believe that there is an enemy that is causing more 
grief and anguish in the thousands of fireside circles all over our 
country than any other, then it is our duty to have this sentiment 
represented and that representation brought to the ballot-box. 

The power of our nation does not consist in its navies, in its forts, 
in its musketry, or in its magazines, but the power of our institu- 
tions is in the virtue and intelligence of our people. And everything 
that destroys or strikes at the vitality of this virtue is striking at 
the power of our nation. Is there anything that is more effectively 
striking at the virtue and intelligence of our people than strong 
drink? The very atmosphere surrounding the thousands of dram- 
shops that are sustained by law all over the country breathes forth 
corruption and moral destruction, and no agent is more effective 
in destroying the brain than strong drink. ... 


For President the following were placed in nomination: Hon. 
James Black, of Pennsylvania; Chief-Justice Salmon P. Chase 
of the United States Supreme Court, of Ohio; Hon. S. B. Chase, 
of Pennsylvania; Gerrit Smith, of New York; General Neal 
Dow, of Maine; Rev. John Russell, of Michigan; Benjamin F. 
Butler, of Massachusetts; and Justice David Davis, of Ilinois— 
all of them giants. 

For Vice-President the following were proposed: Henry Fish, 
of Michigan; James Black, of Pennsylvania; Dr. John Blackmar, 
of New Hampshire; G. T. Stewart, of Ohio; J. A. Spencer, of 
Ohio; and Stephen B. Ransom, of New Jersey. 

There having been so many suggestions, a committee was 
chosen to consider and recommend a ticket. It reported: for 
President, James, Black, of Pennsylvania; for Vice-President, 


90 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


John Russell, of Michigan. These were unanimously made the 
nominees of the convention amid great enthusiasm. 

The platform adopted was a broad, comprehensive, and for- 
ward-looking one. It showed that the men founding the new 
party on the great transcendent issue of prohibition were not one- 
idea men. It gave evidence that they were able to frame a pro- 
gram for the government which would benefit the people in many 
different ways. 

The far-seeing statesmanship exhibited in this platform is 
evidenced by the fact that of the four amendments to the Con- 
stitution of the United States which have been adopted in the 
half century since that time, three of the four were first advo- 
cated in this platform—Direct Election of United States Sena- 
tors, Prohibition, and Woman Suffrage. It should be added of 
the fourth, the Income Tax amendment—that the Prohibition 
party was the first party to advocate the income tax in a party 
platform. 

The founders of the Prohibition party were pioneers in states- 
manship. The only charge that can be made against them is that 
they were in advance of their time. | 

This platform, in addition to the three measures mentioned, 
advocated advanced standards in the public service which ante- 
dated the Civil Service Reform movement. It stood for sound 
money at a time when there were many clamoring for unsound 
theories. It advocated reforms in transportation which it took 
the old parties fifteen years to reach in the Interstate Commerce 
Act. It advocated education. 

It promulgated a basis for suffrage which has not been sur- 
passed. It declared that suffrage inheres in the nature of man 
and rests on no mere circumstances of color, race, former social 
condition or sex. The only qualifications for suffrage should be 
age and mental and moral qualifications, not those of sex, color, 
or race. 

The suffrage plank was the only one which caused much dis- 
cussion in the convention, a few wanting to eliminate the word 
sex. But the resolution as presented was adopted by a large 
majority, there having been only twenty-two votes against it.. 
The Chairman of the Platform Committee, the man said to have 
been the one most responsible for the plank advocating Woman 
Suffrage, was Gideon T. Stewart, of Ohio. 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 91 


THE PLATFORM OF 1872 


Resolved, That we reaffirm the three following resolutions adopted 
by the National Prohibition Convention, held at Chicago, September 
I, 1869: 

W hereas, Protection and allegiance are reciprocal duties, and every 
citizen who yields obedience to the just commands of the Govern- 
ment is entitled to the full, free and perfect protection of that Gov- 
ernment in all the enjoyments of personal security, personal liberty 
and private property: and, 

Whereas, The traffic in intoxicating drinks greatly impairs the per- 
sonal security and personal liberty of a large mass of citizens, and 
renders private property insecure: and, 

Whereas, All other political parties are hopelessly unwilling to adopt 
an adequate policy on this question: therefore, we in National Con- 
vention assembled, as citizens of this free ‘republic, sharing the 
duties and responsibilities of its Government, in discharge “of a 
solemn duty we owe to our country and our race, unite in the fol- 
lowing declaration of principles: 

1. That we acknowledge the pure patriotism and profound states- 
manship of those patriots who laid the foundation of this Govern- 
ment, securing at once the rights of the States severally, and their 
inseparable Union by the Federal Constitution. We would not 
merely garnish the sepulchres of our republican fathers, but we 
do hereby renew our solemn pledges of fealty to the: imperishable 
principles of civil and religious hberty embodied in the Declara- 
tion of American Independence and our Federal Constitution. 

2. That the traffic in intoxicating beverages is a dishonor to 
Christian civilization, inimical to the best interests of society, a 
political wrong of unequalled enormity, subversive of the ordinary 
objects of government, not capable of being regulated or restrained 
by any system of license whatever, but imperatively demanding for 
its suppression effective legal prohibition, by both State and Na- 
tional Legislation. 

3. That while we recognize the good providence of Almighty 
God in supervising the interests of this nation from its establish- 
ment to the present time, having organized our party for the legal 
prohibition of the liquor traffic, our reliance for success is upon 
the same Omnipotent Arm. 

And be it further Resolved: 

4. That there can be no greater peril to the nation than the exist- 
ing party competition for the liquor vote: that any party not openly 
opposed to the traffic, experience shows, will engage in this com- 
petition, will court the favor of the criminal classes, will barter 
away the public morals, the purity of the ballot, and every object 
of good government for party success. 


92 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


5. That while adopting national political measures for the pro- 
hibition of the liquor traffic we will continue the use of all moral 
means in our power to persuade men away from the injurious prac- 
tice of using intoxicating beverages. 

6. That we invite all persons, whether total abstainers or not, 
who recognize the terrible injuries inflicted by the liquor traffic, 
to unite with us for its overthrow, and secure thereby peace, order 
and the protection of persons and property. 


Public Service. 


7. That competency, honesty and sobriety are indispensable quali- 
fications for holding public office. 

8. That removals from public service for mere difference of 
political opinion is a practice» opposed to sound policy and just 
principles. 

9g. That fixed and moderate salaries should take the place of 
official fees and perquisites: the franking privilege, sinecures, and 
all unnecessary offices and expenses should be abolished and every 
possible means be employed to prevent corruption and venality in 
office: and, by a rigid system of accountability from all its officers 
and guards over the public treasury, the utmost economy should be 
practiced and enforced in every department of the Government. 

10. That we favor the election of President, Vice-President and 
United States Senators, by direct vote of the people. 


Finance and Commerce 


11. That we are in favor of a sound national currency, ade- 
quate to the demands of business, and convertible into gold and 
silver at the will of the holder; and the adoption of every measure, 
compatible with justice and the public safety, to appreciate our 
present currency to the gold standard. 

12, That the rates of inland and ocean postage, of telegraphic 
communication, of railroad and water transportation and travel, 
should be reduced to the lowest practicable point, by force of laws 
wisely and justly framed, with reference, not only to the interest of 
the capital employed, but to the higher claim of the general good. 


Labor and Revenue 


13. That an adequate public revenue being necessary, it may prop- 
erly be raised by impost duties and by an equitable assessment upon 
the property and legitimate business of the country; nevertheless, 
we are opposed to any discrimination of capital against labor, as 
well as to all monopoly and class legislation. 

14. That the removal of the burdens—moral, physical, pecuniary 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 93 


and social—imposed by the traffic in intoxicating drinks, will, in 
our judgment, emancipate labor and practically thus promote labor 
reform. 


Education 


15. That the fostering and extension of common schools under 
the care and support of the State, to supply the want of a general 
and liberal education, is a primary duty of good government. 


Suffrage 


16. That the right of suffrage rests on no mere circumstances 
of color, race, former social conditions, sex or nationality, but in- 
heres in the nature of man: and when from any cause it has been 
withheld from citizens of our country who are of suitable age, and 
mentally and morally qualified for the discharge of its duties, it 
should be speedily restored by the people in their sovereign capacity. 


Citizens 


17. That a liberal and just policy should be pursued to promote 
foreign immigration to our shores: always allowing to the natural- 
ized citizens equal rights, privileges and protection under the Con- 
stitution with those who are native born. 


THE NOMINEES 


First Candidate for President. James Black, the first candidate 
of the Prohibition party for President, was born in Lewisburg, 
Pennsylvania, in 1823. The early years of his life were spent 
ona farm. He earned in a sawmill the money which enabled him 
to engage a private teacher to continue his education. He at- 
tended Lewisburg Academy. Later he studied law and was 
admitted to practice in 1846, becoming a prominent member of 
the bar in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 

In 1840, at the age of seventeen, he joined the Washingtonian 
Movement and at twenty-three he organized a Division of the 
Sons of Temperance. In 1852 he took part in the Maine Law 
campaign in Pennsylvania, acting as chairman of the Lancaster 
County Committee organized by a convention of men determined 
to secure a state prohibitory law like that of Maine. 

Originally a Democrat, in 1854 he became a Republican and 
helped to organize the Republican party. He was a delegate to 
its first national convention in 1856. 


94 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


From 1858 to 1862 he was Grand Chief Templar of the 
Pennsylvania Good Templars. In 1865 he was one of the found- 
ers of the National Temperance Society. In a paper read at the 
Fifth National Temperance Convention in 1865 he outlined the 
plans for the National Temperance Society and - Publication 
House and afterwards prepared its charter, constitution and 
rules of publication, and was chairman of the committee ap- 
pointed to secure adequate capital for the enterprise. 

Prominent as a layman in the Methodist Episcopal Church, he 
was in 1869 one of the founders of the Ocean Grove Camp Meet- 
ing Association. 

After the Civil War, convinced of the impossibility of settling 
the issue presented by the drink traffic within the ranks of the 
Republican party he joined the Prohibition party movement. He 
assisted in the call and attended the Farwell Hall Convention in 
1869 and became Permanent Chairman of that convention. 

Throughout his life he continued his activity in behalf of the 
Prohibition party. From 1876 to 1880 he was chairman of the 
National Committee. He assembled a library containing prob- 
ably the largest private collection of temperance literature which 
has ever been brought together, over 1,200 volumes and pam- 
phlets. Upon his death, in 1893, it was bequeathed to the Na- 
tional Temperance Society and is now in the New York Public 
Library. He wrote several very able pamphlets upon the Pro- 
hibition party. 

First Candidate for Vice-President. John Russell, the first 
candidate of the Prohibition party for Vice-President, was born 
in Livingston county, New York, in 1822, of Puritan ancestry. 
In 1838 the family removed to Michigan. At the age of twenty- 
one he entered the Methodist Episcopal ministry in the Detroit 
Conference. He served charges in a number of the important 
cities of that state. For eight years he was a Presiding Elder. In 
1860 and 1880 he was a delegate to the General Conference of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1880 he was chairman of 
the Committee on Temperance in the General Conference. 

He was long prominent in the Order of Good Templars, hav- 
ing been twelve years at the head of that organization in Michi- 
gan, and for two years, 1871 and 1872, he was the head of the 
Order throughout the world. He made a trip to Europe in its 
behalf. The reports on political action for four successive years 
beginning with 1867 adopted by the Right Worthy Grand Lodge 
of Good Templars were written by him. 

He was called the Father of the Prohibition Party, having 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 95 


begun to advocate separate party action in his newspaper, The 
Peninsular Herald, as early as 1867. He arranged for the first 
state meeting at which action. was taken looking toward the 
founding of the Party. He was Temporary Chairman of the 
1869 Convention, and Chairman of the National Committee 
from 1869 to 1872. 

He wrote many logical and noteworthy articles which appeared 
in the Prohibition papers and developed the early party philosophy 
probably more fully than any other man. 

He lived to a ripe and honored old age and for over forty 
years from the time of his candidacy for Vice-President he con- 
tinued his active interest in the Prohibition party. 

National Chairman. Simeon B. Chase was elected Chairman 
of the National Committee to succeed John Russell, who had been 
chairman from 1869 to 1872. He had been one of the organizers 
of the Republican party in Pennsylvania. In 1856 he was elected 
a member of the Legislature and was several times reelected. He 
served as Speaker of the House and was an exceptionally able 
presiding officer. He was said to have been in line for the gov- 
ernorship at the hands of that party when he withdrew to join 
the Prohibitionists. 


THE CAMPAIGN OF 1872 


During the first national campaign the times were not as 
propitious as it seemed three years before that they would be. 
There were reconstruction problems following the Civil War 
which were still unsolved. Although President Grant had been a 
great General, he was not generally regarded as successful in the 
Presidency. Yet there was great pressure brought to bear upon 
Republicans to vote for the reelection of Grant to keep the Demo- 
crats out, and this pressure was especially effective with the ex- 
soldiers who took a pride in following their former General. 
There were also intense feelings and antipathies between the 
parties engendered by the war which persisted for many years 
and made it difficult to alter the fixed party lines. 

Among the temperance voters there was considerable dissatis- 
faction with the President’s reputed drinking habits, but many 
were willingly mollified by the fact that for Vice-President the 
Republicans nominated the leading temperance man in the Senate, 
Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, who in 1862 had so 
vigorously opposed the passage of the Internal Revenue Act. He 
was also the President of the Congressional Temperance Society 


96 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


which had been reorganized in 1867. He had used some very 
strong language condemning intemperance and the liquor traffic, 
but he generally avoided the political aspects of the question. 

The Republican platform, however, contained a plank which 
far overshadowed the sop of a mere Vice-Presidential nomina- 
tion. 


THE RASTER RESOLUTION 


The sixteenth plank of the Republican platform of 1872, 
known as the Raster Resolution, was as follows: 


16. The Republican party proposes to respect the rights reserved 
by the people to themselves as carefully as the powers delegated by 
them to the state and the federal government. It disapproves of 
the resort to unconstitutional laws for the purpose of removing 
evils, by interference with rights not surrendered by the people 
to either the state or national government. 


It was somewhat enigmatic in its wording but its author, 
Herman Raster, who was the editor of the I/linois Staats Zeitung, 
a German paper, the special advocate of the brewery interests in 
the Northwest, declared: 


It was adopted by the platform committee with the full and ex- 
plicit understanding that its purpose was the discountenancing of 
all so-called temperance (prohibitory) and Sunday laws. This 
purpose was meant to be expressed by reference to those rights of 
the people which had not been delegated to either national or state 
governments—it being assumed that the right to drink what one 
pleases (being responsible for all acts committed under the in- 
fluence of strong drink), and the right to look upon the day on 
which Christians have their prayer meetings as any other day, were 
among the rights not delegated by the people, but reserved to them- 
selves. 


The purpose of this plank was to appease the liquor vote. The 
Republican politicians were becoming alarmed because of the 
fear of the defection of the liquor element to the Democratic 
party. In several states Republican candidates who were known 
as moderate temperance men had been defeated because the liquor 
traffic had thrown its vote to the Democratic party. 

On the other hand, in some states the Republican politicians, 
concerned lest there might be a sufficient number go to the 
Prohibition party to destroy their margin of plurality and give 
the election to the Democrats, were making some minor conces- 
sions to the Prohibition element. This had been the case in Ilhi- 


_ 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 27 


nois. In 1870 in the Eighth Congressional District of Illinois, 
which is probably the first district where a Prohibition party 
candidate was nominated and made a campaign, George W. 
Minier, the Prohibition nominee, had drawn off a sufficient 
number of votes from the Republicans so that a Democrat was 
elected, notwithstanding that the district, which included Spring- 
field and Bloomington, had been a strong Republican district. 
This caused indignation and consternation, and the defeat was 
charged directly to the Prohibitionists. As a consequence, early 
in 1872 the Illinois Legislature enacted a strong Civil Damage 
Law, the measure having been supported largely by the Repub- 
licans upon the ground that something must be done to check 
the Prohibition movement. 

This law, having severe penalties, so enraged the liquor element 
that they swore vengeance on the Republican party, with the re- 
sult that at the ensuing State Convention it became necessary for 
the Republicans to make peace with the liquor traffic by com- 
plying with its demands. At that State Convention Herman 
Raster inserted a personal liberty plank in the platform. 

Furthermore, Raster was made a delegate to the National Con- 
vention and he was placed on the Platform Committee, the Illi- 
nois delegation knowing full well the particular plank which he 
was especially interested in having adopted. 

The national political situation was also such that the Repub- 
lican leaders were scared, not knowing how many voters were 
going with the Liberal Republican movement with which the 
Democrats had joined in nominating Horace Greeley for Presi- 
dent. They dared not offend a group of voters as large and 
as well organized as the liquor vote had now come to be. Mr. 
Raster, later, in describing the session of the Platform Committee 
in which his resolution was adopted, said that some of the com- 
mittee opposed the adoption of the resolution because it was 
feared it would hurt the party in the East: 


Some said that many had already left the party with Schurz and 
would vote for Horace Greeley. I [Raster] said, “unless you adopt 
that resolution, I shall put on my hat and walk out of this conven- 
tion and go with Mr. Schurz too.” 


Thus the direct threat of a bolt by the spokesman for the 
German brewery interests caused the public surrender of the 
dominant party, and the incorporation of a plank, the purpose 
of which was to discountenance all temperance and Sunday laws. 

Mr. Raster’s threat had weight because the delegates were 
familiar with the political power of the liquor interests which had 


98 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


been developing with increasing momentum in the decade since 
the adoption of the Internal Revenue system. 

The year before, in 1871, the United States Brewers’ Associa- 
tion had resolved: 


The committee on agitation is hereby authorized and directed 
to select in each congressional district three brewers residing therein 
as a local and provisional organizing committee for such district, 
whose duty it shall be to organize by means best suited to the lo- 
cality all the defenders of the rights of man, . . . in order to defeat 
at all elections any candidate for office whose success might give 
encouragement to temperance fanatics and religious hypocrites to 
carry out their proposed proscriptive, injurious and dangerous plans. 


The Congress of the United States Brewers’ Association of 
1872 met in New York City, June 5, the same day that the 
Republican National Convention convened in Philadelphia. A 
feature of the meeting was a letter from President Grant in 
which he expressed his regret that he was unable to be present 
and participate in their deliberations and in which he commended 
the brewing industry. 

Thus the nation suffered the double humiliation of the Presi- 
dent of the United States giving official recognition to the Beer 
Congress and the dominant party being compelled to do the 
bidding of the liquor traffic for fear of losing liquor votes. 

How thoroughly justified was that most striking plank of 
the Prohibition party platform adopted the preceding February 
22, in’ which it said: 


There can be no greater peril to the nation than the existing party 
competition for the liquor vote: any party not openly opposed to the 
traffic, experience shows, will engage in this competition, will court 
the favor of the criminal classes, will barter away the public morals, 
the purity of the ballot, and every object of good government for 
party success. 


The competition engaged in by the dominant party and the 
President of the United States was demonstrated on an un- 
precedented national scale that very year. 

This plank, by the way, has had the most distinguished career 
of any plank in the history of the Party. It had its origin in 
the Massachusetts Prohibition platform of 1870. With a slight 
change it was incorporated in the national platform of 1872. 
It was reiterated in the remarkably able platform of 1884 and 
incorporated again in the platform of 1920 with the statement 
that this had appeared in the platform of 1872 and that, not- 





f 


THE BEGINNING YEARS, 1869-1872 99 


withstanding that in 1920 liquor was outlawed by the Con- 
stitution, this plank fitly described the existing political attitude 
of the old parties. What a condemning commentary on Ameri- 
can politics that through full fifty years the dominant parties 
kept up a continuous competition for the liquor-degenerated vote. 

The chief reason why Black and Russell received so few votes 
was because most of the votes of the aroused temperance men 
went to Horace Greeley. There had been a large anti-administra- 
tion sentiment which had developed within the Republican party 
led by Carl Schurz, then a Senator from Missouri, and others 
which culminated in a Liberal Republican Convention at Cin- 
cinnati which nominated Horace Greeley for President. The 
Democrats, knowing that they had no hope of winning the elec- 
tion by putting up a separate ticket also nominated Greeley but 
did not give very whole-hearted support. While the prohibition 
issue did not enter into his campaign, and Schurz was a German 
with a friendliness for beer, the fact that Greeley was a strong 
temperance man, and had been a vigorous supporter of prohibition 
in the fifties, drew to him much prohibition support which might 
otherwise have gone to Black and Russell. 

The United States Brewers’ Association was bitter against 
Greeley. Its president referred to him as a man: 


Whose antecedents will warrant him a pliant tool in the hand 
of the Temperance Party and none of you, gentlemen, can support 
him. It is necessary for you to make an issue at this election 
throughout the entire country, and although I have belonged to the 
Democratic party ever since I have had a vote, I would sooner vote 
for the Republican ticket than cast my ballot for such a candidate. 


In this situation only a small campaign was conducted by the 
Prohibition candidates. No campaign funds were provided. 
Each state committee did what it could within its own territory. 
The principal organ of the party was the Peninsular Herald, 
John Russell’s paper, and its circulation did not exceed 5,000 
copies weekly. The party was unable to attract much attention 
and much of the newspaper comment which it did receive was 
of a very abusive kind. 

The chief work of the campaign was the circulation through- 
out the country of a pamphlet prepared by John Russell, entitled 
An Adequate Remedy for a National Evil. This was a very 
able and convincing document which set forth some reasons for 
the organization of a separate and independent national party with 
prohibition as the dominant issue and answered the more com- 


100 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


mon objections to the movement. About 100,000 copies of this 
were distributed. It was reported that seven college presidents 
were known to have been converted to the party by the arguments 
contained therein, and a large number of clergymen and school 
teachers were likewise converted. 

Votes for presidential electors were reported in only six states 
as follows: Connecticut, 205; Michigan, 1,271; New Hampshire, 
200; New York, 201; Ohio, 2,100; Pennsylvania, 1,630; a total 
of 5,605. For the state tickets considerably larger votes were 
polled. In Connecticut there were 1,542 votes for the state 
ticket as compared with 205 for the national, and in New Hamp- 
shire there were 478 votes for the state to 200 for the national. 


Chapter VI 
THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 


The decade of the seventies was marked by retreat and defeat 
in temperance legislation and a corresponding advance in the 
political power and influence of the liquor traffic. 

In this period Connecticut lost her prohibitory law in 1872, 
the repeal having been attributed by many temperance men to 
the treachery of the Republican party. 

In Massachusetts after a vacillating policy for several years 
prohibition was finally repealed in 1875. In the preceding elec- 
tion in 1874 the entire Republican state ticket was elected with 
the exception of the nominee for Governor, a supporter of pro- 
hibition, who was defeated by the bolt of the liquor Republicans 
to the Democratic candidate. The Legislature, heavily Repub- 
lican and heavily anti-prohibition, repealed the law. 

Likewise in Michigan in 1875 at the request of the Repub- 
lican Governor the Republican Legislature repealed the partial 
prohibition law which was remaining on the statufe book. A 
tax law was enacted. This action was in fulfillment of a pro- 
gram which had been determined upon by a liquor dealers’ 
convention held in Detroit in August, 1874. 

In Rhode Island a prohibitory law was passed in 1874 but 
was repealed in 1875. 

In many states the anti-liquor forces had retreated to where 
they were fighting for mere local option but even here the results 
were of little permanent value. Pennsylvania in 1872 passed a 
local option law after a hard fight, it having failed of passage in 
the Legislature of 1871 by only one vote. Between 1872 and 
1875, forty-one of the sixty-six counties of the state adopted local 
no-license and the aggregate majority in the whole state against 
license was 17,619. But in 1875 the Legislature repealed the 
local option law. ‘Thus all the gains were summarily swept away. 

In New York local option bills passed the Legislature in two 
successive sessions in 1872 and 1873 but in both cases they were 
vetoed by the Governor. 

In Indiana the Baxter law, a strongly restrictive law, was 


passed in 1873 but it was repealed the next year. 
101 


102 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


As the outcome of the continuous agitation by the temperance 
organizations about the only concession that they received from 
the legislatures was the passage of some civil damage laws. 
These were intended to make the liquor dealers legally responsible 
for the injuries arising from the liquor traffic. But they were 
usually so framed as to be impracticable in application and they 
were seldom enforced. To bring suit to collect damages from a 
saloon-keeper would usually result merely in protracted and ex- 
pensive litigation. The consequence was that the families of the 
hapless victims of the alcohol traffic had a very small chance of 
ever collecting any money from the saloon-keepers. 

In Congress there were weak beginnings toward recognition 
of the national aspects of the question. In 1872 Senator Pome- 
roy of Kansas introduced a prohibition bill for the District of 
Columbia and the territories but it never got farther than the 
committee to which it was referred. In 1874 the Senate passed 
a bill which had been advocated by the National Temperance So- 
ciety and other temperance organizations providing for the ap- 
pointment of a Committee of Inquiry on the Alcoholic Liquor 
Traffic. 

This measure had an interesting history. Five times between 
1874 and 1884 it passed the Senate but every time it was defeated 
in the House. By 1893 it had twice again passed the Senate, 
making seven times, but it always met defeat in the House. It 
never got as far as the voting stage in the House but was either 
defeated in the committee or, if reported, it was left on the 
calendar. The history of this bill is a striking illustration of the 
way in which a party will often give encouragement to the ad- 
vocates of a reform measure by permitting it to pass one house 
but prevent its enactment by killing it in the second chamber. 
The usual place of execution is in one of the stages prior to the 
voting stage, either in the committee or by being left on the 
calendar. It was this continued duplicity of the old parties which 
led many thinking men ultimately to come to the conclusion 
that there was no hope of the existing parties taking up pro- 
hibition and made them see the necessity of a party thoroughly 
committed to prohibition. 

In 1879 some easily encouraged old party temperance men 
thought a victory had been gained when the House of Represen- 
tatives voted to appoint a standing Committee on the Alcoholic 
Liquor Traffic. But it amounted to little more than nothing. 
It was in many Congresses so constituted by the Speaker as to 
be opposed to temperance legislation. 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 103 


In the Forty-fourth Congress in 1876 Henry W. Blair of New 
Hampshire, then a Representative, introduced the first joint res- 
olution for a prohibitory amendment to the Constitution. It 
provided merely for the prohibition of distilled liquors, the 
amendment to take effect in 1900. In 1887 Mr. Blair, then a 
member of the Senate, introduced an amendment for the prohibi- 
tion of all alcoholic liquors. 


LIQUOR’S INCREASING POWER 


While in the seventies prohibitory legislation went backward 
and the whole temperance movement was characterized by vacil- 
lation and defeat, the liquor interests, confident because of their 
victories, went forward like a conquering army, each year at- 
taining additional political power. 

The Democratic National Convention of 1876, not to be outbid 
in the competition for liquor votes by the Raster resolution of 
the Republicans in 1872, adopted a plank the meaning of which 
as a bid for the liquor vote could not be misunderstood. The 
platform said: “For the Democracy of the whole country we do 
affirm our faithin . . . the liberty of individual conduct unvexed 
by sumptuary laws.’’ The Democratic nominee, Mr. Tilden, with 
this in his platform received a majority of the popular vote. 

The annual congresses of the United States Brewers’ Associa- 
tion indicated a continuous and increasing activity in politics. 
In 1873 the president of the Association boasted that, “‘the last 
presidential election (1872) has shown us what unity among us 
can do.” In return for brewers’ support the Washington Agi- 
tation Committee reported “the signature by the President of 
the United States of the revised brewers’ bill giving the trade 
salutary changes in the law.” 

The nature of their plotting for the control of politics through 
their control of the foreign vote is shown by a speech of Mr. 
Louis Schade, the editor of the Washington Sentinel, the brew- 
ers’ organ, at the Beer Congress of 1873. He analyzed the party 
majority in the states of the North and West in the presidential 
election of 1868, gave the number of foreigners and their children 
in 1870, and said: 

It will be seen that the foreign-born citizens and their children 
are strong enough in every one of those states to turn the scale in 
favor of either one or the other of the contending parties. In most 
of those states it can be done by the German vote alone. It is, 
therefore, for the liberal people but necessary to be united and in 


104 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


earnest to give the death-blow to puritanical tyranny. The future 
is ours! The enormous influx of immigration will, in a few years, 
overreach the puritanical element in every state in the Union. (Vo- 
ciferously applauded, and unusual marks of approval were given 
the speaker. )* 


The brewers’ purpose to dominate the Republican party is 
indicated by the president of the United States Brewers’ Asso- 
ciation in 1875: 


It is true, gentlemen, that our citizens of German extraction, al- 
most as a body, identify themselves with the Republican party, and 
have reason to point with pride to many results achieved with their 
assistance. ... It is my purpose to arouse my countrymen to a 
proper sense and appreciation of their importance, power and in- 
fluence within the Republican party, to call upon them to assert 
the same, to the fullest possible extent, and to change from a nega- 
tive to a positive element of its construction. 


The Beer Congress of 1875 resolved: 


That politicians favoring prohibitory enactments, who offer them- 
selves as candidates for office, be everywhere strenuously opposed, 
and the more so if it be found that their personal habits do not 
conform with their public professions. 


At this congress, Mr. Schade uttered what came to be their 
watchword: “No, gentlemen, first personal and then political 
liberty! First beer and then politics.” 

The Beer Congress of 1877 resolved: 


That all persons seeking appointment for public office who are 
known enemies to our trade or who seek the support of the so- 
called temperance party be earnestly opposed irrespective of their 
political creeds.” 


By this time political activity was well understood to be an 
ingrained purpose of the liquor organizations. 

The liquor traffic had come to have an almost complete con- 
trol over politics. It had not only succeeded in defeating tem- 
perance legislation and repealing existing laws but in almost 
every state it was placing its supporters in office. 

In Massachusetts the Republicans in 1875 went over definitely 
to license and were successful in the election. In Rhode Island 
in 1875 the Republicans nominated an avowed liquor license ad- 


1 See report of 1873 Congress of U. S. Brewers’ Assn. It is quoted in Non- 
Partisanship ; or Do Not Take Temperance into Politics, p. 25. 

2 Quotations from numerous resolutions of the U. S. Brewers’ Association and 
comments upon them are found in Non-Partisanship; or Do Not Take Temperance 
into Politics. 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 105 


vocate. The temperance Republicans revolted and joining the 
Prohibitionists polled 8,724 votes and the election of the Governor 
was thrown into the Legislature where liquor Republicans and 
liquor Democrats combined and elected the Republican candidate. 
In Pennsylvania the Governor who signed the bill for the repeal 
of local option was unanimously renominated and was reelected. 

In Ohio in 1874 under the influence of the Woman’s Crusade 
the Republican party adopted a mild resolution against “intem- 
perance and its causes” but this provoked the opposition of the 
brewers and beer drinkers and brought temporary defeat. At 
the next Republican state convention in 1875 all pretense of 
opposition to the evil of intemperance was abandoned. In that 
year three of the candidates on the same ticket with Rutherford 
B. Hayes as candidate for Governor were reported to be drunk- 
ards. 

The beer traffic was growing in geometrical proportion, more 
than doubling every decade. In 1850 just before the early pro- 
hibitory movement began the consumption of beer was 36,563,009 
gallons. By 1860 several years after the prohibitory agitation 
had been sidetracked it was 101,346,669 gallons. By 1870 after 
the liquor traffic had received the sanction of the national gov- 
ernment the consumption had more than doubled to 204,756,156 
gallons. By the end of the seventies during a decade when the 
liquor traffic had obtained the mastery of politics it had more 
than doubled again to 414,220,165 gallons. And by 1890 it more 
than doubled again to 855,692,335 gallons, a truly colossal and 
alarming increase. 

In 1873 to 1875, the country was aroused by the exposé of 
the whisky frauds which were being perpetrated against the gov- 
ernment. It was estimated that the government was cheated out 
of $4,000,000 of revenue. The investigation revealed the in- 
herently lawless and unscrupulous character of the liquor traf- 
fic. The frauds involved those high in the administration, in- 
cluding the private secretary to the President. A large number 
of United States gaugers, storekeepers and others were arrested. 
Some were tried and convicted, some went to prison but most 
of the men higher up escaped. 

One of the most disgraceful facts developed in the whisky 
ring trials was that the offenders were shielded by men high 
in the administration for political reasons. An ex-United States 
Commissioner of Revenue testified that after the frauds had been 
discovered, and while they were still in progress, he conferred 
with the Secretary of the Treasury and they decided to wait 


106 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


before taking effectual measures to stop the frauds until after 
sundry pending state elections, then several senatorial elections 
and also a presidential election had passed. Thus the whisky 
thieves were permitted to go on robbing the government. 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY FOLLOWING 1872 


After the disappointing vote in 1872 a number who in the 
beginning had looked favorably upon separate party action be- 
came discouraged and quit. There were a few, however, pro- 
foundly convinced of the righteousness of their cause and the 
correctness of their position who refused to be discouraged. 

At the Seventh National Temperance Convention, in 1873, 
the question of party action was the most discussed subject in 
the convention. The majority of the Resolutions Committee 
presented a resolution which would have committed that conserva- 
tive temperance convention whole-heartedly and unreservedly to 
the task of building up the third party. It read: 


Resolved, That the time has arrived fully to introduce the tem- 
perance issue into State and National politics; that we recommend 
all friends of temperance to make it henceforth the paramount is- 
sue, and we do hereby pledge our adherence to the National Pro- 
hibition party, and recommend that it be organized in each town, 
and city, and county and district, and State in the Union; and ap- 
pealing to the God of righteousness and justice for guidance and 
support, we will maintain the organization until success crowns 
the effort. 


A compromise resolution was finally adopted which declared 
that the time had arrived to introduce the Temperance ques- 
tion into state and national politics and recommended all friends 
of temperance to make it henceforth the paramount issue. It 
amended the original resolution by adopting the following: 


To cooperate with the existing party organizations where such 
will endorse the legislative policy of prohibition and nominate can- 
didates pledged to its support; otherwise to organize and maintain 
separate and independent party action in every State and in each 
congressional and electoral district of the United States. 


It thus endorsed the Prohibition party position of the neces- 
sity of a party organization supporting prohibition both by plat- 
form declaration and candidates pledged thereto. On the ground, 
however, that there had been a few states where a major party 
had been favorable to prohibition, the convention was not ready 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 107 


to forsake these state parties. This situation was so rare and 
exceptional, probably existing at that time in no state except 
Maine, that the effect of this resolution was to give a renewed 
impetus to the Prohibition party. 

The election in the off year 1873, in which the vote increased 
to 18,723 in the five states where there were tickets, indicated 
additional interest. 

In New York there was an increased vote, due partially to the 
revulsion against Governor Dix because of his veto of local option 
after it had been passed twice by the Legislature in successive 
years. 

Ohio showed an encouraging gain reflecting the activity of 
able party leaders and the growing sentiment in that state. 
Gideon T. Stewart, the candidate for Governor, made a canvass 
of the state and polled 10,277 votes. 

In Connecticut the vote increased to 2,541. The history of 
the beginning of the party in Connecticut is instructive as show- 
ing how the Prohibition party arose only after the temperance 
men had been repeatedly betrayed by the dominant party. Since 
1854 there had been a prohibitory law on the statute book. In 
the early years of the law it had been well enforced and excellent 
results had been obtained. But between 1857 and 18632 the law 
had been gradually weakened by successive amendments passed 
nearly every year. 

The law was defective in that it provided no officers who 
were charged with special responsibility for its enforcement and 
about 1867 there began a strong agitation for a state constab- 
ulary. In 1869 Governor Buckingham, the honored War Gover- 
nor and steadfast temperance man, headed a petition to the Legis- 
lature signed by over 10,000 citizens requesting the establishment 
of a state police force. 

The Legislature of 1869, although it was supposed to have 
been favorable to temperance, postponed action which was thought 
to be due to the political influence of the liquor interest. There 
were mutterings of increasing indignation among the temperance 
people and the proposition to form an independent Prohibition 
party began to be seriously discussed. The managers of the Re- 
publican party became alarmed lest the formation of a new party 
would imperil their party and they took steps to conciliate the 
temperance element. 

So in the campaign of 1871 the Republican party adopted a 
plank declaring it the duty of the Legislature to inquire what 
further legislation might be necessary to give efficiency to the 


108 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


existing laws so that the peace, security and the health of the com- 
monwealth might be protected. 

Although the plank was not definite, during the campaign the 
opponents of the state police measure sought to defeat the Re- 
publican party on this issue. The temperance men from all 
parties rallied to the support of the Republican party and carried 
the election notwithstanding the Democrats were then in control 
of the state government and over the country there was a decided 
trend toward the Democratic party. The result of the election 
was looked upon as a triumph for temperance and law enforce- 
ment. 

When the Legislature met there was a strong effort to secure 
the passage of the state police bill. But notwithstanding the 
promises of the campaign and the fact that it was due to the 
temperance votes that victory had been won in the election, the 
bill was vigorously assailed by the party leaders and defeated. 
For this treachery the Republican party was strongly condemned 
by the better elements of the state. 

Out of this situation developed the call for the organization 
of the Prohibition party in Connecticut in December, 1871. At 
the next election, in the spring of 1872, the first candidate for 
Governor was Francis Gillette who had been a United States 
Senator in the fifties. He received 1,549 votes. The Republi- 
cans elected their candidate by the narrow margin of less than 
100 votes. At the next session of the Legislature both parties 
united in repealing the prohibitory law. 

Following the loss of the law the temperance people became 
more aroused. The Prohibition party conducted an active cam- 
paign extending over two months prior to the spring election of 
1873. The candidate for Governor was Henry D. Smith who 
was also renominated in two succeeding campaigns. He received 
2,541 votes. The speakers of the campaign included John Rus- 
sell, of Michigan, the Rev. George H. Vibbert, of Massachusetts, 
and the Rev. Arthur Deering, of New Hampshire. The Temper- 
ance Journal which had been founded in 1872 was the state party 
organ and was influential. Much credit was due State Chairman 
Henry B. Brown who served for six years in the early period of 
the party in Connecticut. He had been Secretary of the Repub- 
lican State Committee. 

In the next campaign, 1874, the vote of Connecticut almost 
doubled that of 1873, reaching 4,960 votes which was over five 
per cent of the total vote. 

In 1874 over the country there was a total vote of 39,351 in 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 109 


nine states. Of this vote New York polled 11,768. The candi- 
date for Governor was Myron H. Clark, who had been elected 
Governor in 1854 and had been the Prohibition party’s first 
candidate for Governor in 1870. 

In New Hampshire John Blackmar polled 2,100 votes for 
Governor and in Michigan George B. Carpenter received 3,937. 

In Kansas the first ticket received 2,277 votes and this was 
the beginning of the movement which led to the adoption of 
constitutional prohibition half a dozen years later. 

There was an increasing comprehension of the fact that indi- 
vidual temperance candidates of parties desiring to hold the liquor 
vote could not be depended upon after election. Cases of men 
in office going back upon their pre-election pledges had become 
very common. 

In 1875 nine states polled 42,185 votes. Of these more than 
33,000 came from New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. 
The Pennsylvania vote rose to 13,244 due largely to the sweep- 
ing away of the local option law under which forty-one counties 
had voted for local no-license. The candidate for Governor was 
Robert A. Browne. Massachusetts polled 9,124 votes, the repeal 
of her prohibitory law that year having demonstrated the hos- 
tility of the larger parties. 


THE CONVENTION OF 1876 


The second National Nominating Convention met in Cleve- 
land, Ohio, May 17, 1876. The Chairman of the National Com- 
mittee, S. B. Chase, being absent, the convention was called 
to order by the Secretary, John Russell. President H. A. Thomp- 
son of Otterbein University opened the meeting with prayer. 
General Green Clay Smith, of Kentucky, was chosen Temporary 
Chairman. Dr. H. A. Thompson was made Permanent Chair- 
man and Charles P. Russell, of Michigan, Secretary. 

The platform was a broad-gauge one. Each plank was 
thoroughly discussed before adoption. In the platform the Pro- 
hibition party was again the pioneer in statesmanship. In this 
platform the following principles were advocated for the first 
time in a party platform: | 

1. A prohibitory amendment to the national Constitution to 
make prohibition universal and permanent. 

2. International arbitration as a means of settling interna- 
tional disputes. 

3. The abolition of polygamy and the social evil. 


110 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


4. The suppression of lotteries and gambling whether in 
gold, stocks, produce or other forms of property. 

5. The national observance of the Christian Sabbath. 

6. The free use of the Bible in the public schools as a text- 
book of the purest morals, of the best liberty and the noblest 
literature. 

The Chairman of the platform committee was Gideon T. 
Stewart. 


THE PLATFORM OF 1876 


The Prohibition Reform party of the United States, organized 
in the name of the people to revive, enforce and perpetuate. in the 
Government the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, sub- 
mit in this Centennial year of the Republic for the suffrages of all 
good citizens the following platform of national reforms and meas- 
ures. 

1. The legal prohibition in the District of Columbia, the Ter- 
ritories, and in every other place subject to the laws of Congress, 
of the importation, exportation, manufacture and traffic of all alco- 
holic beverages, as high crimes against society, an amendment of the 
national Constitution to render these prohibitory measures universal 
and permanent; and the adoption of treaty stipulations with foreign 
powers to prevent the importation and exportation of all alcoholic 
beverages. 

2. The abolition of class legislation and of special privileges in 
the Government, and the adoption of equal suffrage and eligibility 
to office without distinction of race, religious creed, property or sex. 

3. The appropriation of the public lands in limited quantities 
to actual settlers only; the reduction of the rates of inland and 
ocean postage; of telegraphic communication; of railroad and water 
transportation and travel to the lowest practical point by force of 
laws, wisely and justly framed, with reference not only to the in- 
terests of capital employed but to the higher claims of the general 
good. 

4. The suppression, by law, of lotteries and gambling in gold, 
stocks, produce and every form of money and property, and the 
penal inhibition of the use of the public mails for advertising schemes 
of gambling and lotteries. 

5. The abolition of those foul enormities, polygamy and the 
social evil, and protection of the purity, peace and happiness of 
homes by ample and efficient legislation. 

6. The national observance of the Christian Sabbath, established 
by laws prohibiting ordinary labor and business in all departments 
of public service and private employments (works of necessity, 
charity and religion excepted) on that day. 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 111 


7. The establishment by mandatory provisions in National and 
State constitutions, and by all necessary legislation, of a system of 
free public schools for the universal and enforced education of all 
the youth of the land. 

8. The free use of the Bible, not as a ground of religious creeds, 
but as a text-book of purest morality, the best liberty and the 
noblest literature, in our public schools, that our children may grow 
up in its light and that its spirit and principles may pervade our 
nation. 

9. The separation of the Government in all its departments and 
institutions, including the public schools and all funds for their 
maintenance, from the control of every religious sect or other as- 
sociation, and the protection alike of all sects by equal laws, with 
entire freedom of religious faith and worship. 

10. The introduction into all treaties hereafter negotiated with 
foreign governments, of a provision for the amicable settlement of 
international difficulties by arbitration. 

11: The abolition of all barbarous modes and instruments of 
punishment. The recognition of the laws of God and the claims of 
humanity in the discipline of jails and prisons, and of that higher 
and wiser civilization worthy of our age and nation, which regards 
the reform of criminals as a means for the prevention of crime. 

12. The abolition of executive and legislative patronage, and the 
election of President, Vice-President, United States Senators, and 
of all civil officers, so far as practicable, by the direct vote of the 
people. 

13. The practice of a friendly and liberal policy to immigrants 
from all nations, the guaranty to them of ample protection, and 
of equal rights and privileges. 

14. The separation of the money of Government from all bank- 
ing institutions. The National Government only should exercise 
the high prerogative of issuing paper money, and that should be 
subject to prompt redemption on demand, in gold and silver, the 
only equal standards of value recognized by the civilized world. 

15. The reduction of the salaries of public officers in a just ratio 
with the decline of wages and market prices, the abolition of sine- 
cures, unnecessary offices and official fees and perquisites; the prac- 
tice of strict economy in Government expenses, and a free and 
thorough investigation into any and all alleged abuses of public 
trust. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. General Green Clay Smith, of Kentucky, was 
nominated for President. He was born in Richmond, Kentucky, 
a member of a distinguished Kentucky family. As a boy he 
served in the Mexican War. At the close of that war he studied 


112 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


in Transylvania University from which he was graduated in 
1850. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1852 and 
practiced his profession until the outbreak of the Civil War. 

Before the war he had been a Democrat and was a member 
of the Kentucky Legislature. When secession began he took the 
Union side. He enlisted as a private and rose to the rank of 
brigadier-general and was brevetted major-general. 

In 1863 when in the field he was elected to Congress and served 
in the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses. 

In the Republican National Convention of 1864, when Lincoln 
was nominated for his second term, in the preliminary caucus- 
ing General Smith lacked but one vote of being selected for Vice- 
President. It is interesting to speculate how the course of history 
might have been changed if Green Clay Smith had been chosen 
Vice-President instead of Andrew Johnson. 

At the end of his service in Congress General Smith was ap- 
pointed Governor of the Territory of Montana. Jeturning to 
Kentucky in 1869, he abandoned politics and entered the ministry 
of the Baptist Church. He had always been a strong temperance 
man and served as head of both the Sons of Temperance and 
the Good Templars in Kentucky. In his later years, up to the 
time of his death in 1895, he was pastor of the Metropolitan 
Baptist Church of Washington, D. C. 

For Vice-President. Gideon T. Stewart, of Ohio, was nom- 
inated. He was born in Johnstown, N. Y., in 1824, of Scotch- 
Irish ancestry. He studied at Oberlin College and was admitted 
to the bar at Norwalk, Ohio, in 1846. He was three times 
elected county auditor. He then spent several years in the news- 
paper business. During the war he was the owner and editor 
of the Dubuque (lowa) Times which was then the only Union 
daily paper in the northern half of that state. 

From his student days to the close of his life he was active 
in behalf of the temperance cause. For over sixty years he gave 
very largely of his time and means for its promotion without 
ever accepting any pecuniary compensation. 

In 1857 he was chairman of a convention held at Columbus 
to organize a political temperance party but the movement was 
arrested by the outbreak of the slavery conflict in Kansas. 

In 1869 he was on the first Ohio Prohibition ticket as candidate 
for Supreme Judge and was that year a delegate to the Chicago 
convention. He was candidate for Governor in 1871 and 1875. 
He also served as the head of the Sons of Temperance and 
Good Templars in Ohio. 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 113 


He was chairman of the Platform Committee at the conven- 
tions of 1872 and 1876. He was Chairman of the National 
Committee from 1880 to 1884. For years he was a prolific 
writer and a leading speaker for the Prohibition party. 


THE CAMPAIGN OF 1876 


A National Committee was chosen at the convention with 
James Black as Chairman and John Russell as Secretary. Mr. 
Black served from 1876 to 1880. 

The name of the party was changed to the Prohibition Reform 
party. Electoral tickets were arranged in eighteen states. Three 
months before election it was thought the candidates would re- 
ceive at least 100,000 votes. The maximum vote in sixteen states 
between 1871 and 1875 had totaled over 75,000. Over forty 
papers were giving Smith and Stewart an earnest support. 

The election of 1876 was very hotly contested. In the pre- 
ceding congressional election in 1874 the Democrats had car- 
ried the House of Representatives by a large majority and in 
1876 Tilden, the Democratic nominee, received a majority of 
the popular vote. In the Electoral College Hayes received a 
majority of only-one. The outcome had been very uncertain and 
as election approached the managers of each party brought their 
utmost pressure to prevent the loss of votes from their parties. 
They not only urged the voters to refrain “for this once’ from 
voting for the new party, but where persuasion did not succeed 
they used more vigorous methods. One method was to endeavor 
to have Prohibition candidates withdrawn. An illustration of 
the extent to which they went was the case of the president of 
Wesleyan University, Dr. Joseph Cummings, who was the Pro- 
hibition candidate for Governor of Connecticut. The Chairman 
of the Republican State Committee confessed that he had written 
letters to a large number of college presidents asking them 
to write as personal friends to Dr. Cummings urging him to 
withdraw. Dr. Cummings, however, demonstrated his devotion 
to his cause by never wavering. He went upon the platform and 
ably and eloquently advocated his party’s principles. 

In some states the Republican managers sent agents out under 
the guise of temperance lecturers with instructions to tell what 
a good temperance man Mr. Hayes was. Some claimed that he 
was not merely a temperance man but a prohibitionist. The re- 
ligious press, generally, advocated Hayes’ election on the ground 
that he was a temperance man. 


114 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


It required strong principle and great courage to resist the pres- 
sure to vote for the old party, especially as the Prohibition party 
lacked organization or the means to hold its sympathizers in line. 
No systematic canvass was made. In scattered sections there 
was considerable activity and some state and local candidates 
added strength to the party. One of the leading men who was 
a candidate for Governor that year was Judge William J. Groo 
in New York. The leading newspaper organ was The Living 
Issue. It was published in New York by a group of Prohibition- 
ists of which Stephen Merritt was the head. The political situ- 
ation was such that it seemed to be practically impossible to make 
headway. 

In many sections the Prohibition vote was either not reported 
or counted as scattering. Not a single vote was credited in New 
York City, Albany or Buffalo. The vote reported for the na- 
tional ticket was 9,737. Where there were state tickets there 
was a much larger vote for the state candidates. Here the elec- 
tion was not so close as in the case of the national candidates 
and the old party pressure was not so strong. Ten states having 
tickets polled a total of 26,014 votes, nearly treble that of the 
national ticket. The largest vote was in Massachusetts where 
12,127 votes were cast for John J. Baker, the Prohibition and 
Greenback candidate for Governor. 


AFTER 1876 


Nothing daunted, the Prohibitionists determined to keep up 
the fight. A National Conference was held in New York City, 
September 26 and 27, 1877, at which the different aspects of the 
liquor situation were thoroughly discussed. Steps were taken 
for the organization of the National Prohibition Alliance. 

In the elections in the fall of 1877 six states gave a total of 
42,230 votes, the largest yet polled. 

Massachusetts with Judge Pitman again the candidate for 
Governor polled 16,354 votes. The next year the Republicans 
nominated a temperance candidate for Governor. lowa polled 
such a good vote, 10,545, that it was a very important factor in 
leading up to the adoption of state prohibition a few years later. 
That movement will be described in the next chapter. 

In Rhode Island the nominee for Governor was General 
Charles A. Van Zandt who as president of the State Senate in 
1874 had cast the deciding vote in favor of the prohibitory law. 
He was nominated by the Prohibitionists and subsequently by 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 115 


the Republicans and was elected. Two years before this, in 1875, 
Mr. Hazard, the Prohibition and Independent nominee for Gov- 
ernor, had received a plurality of the votes with Republican 
and Democratic candidates running, but there not having been 
a majority the election was thrown into the Legislature and the 
license Republican was chosen. But in 1877 the Republicans rati- 
fied the nomination of the Prohibitionists and General Van Zandt 
was elected for three years in succession, 1877, 1878 and 1879. 

The elections of 1878 and 1879 were not of special significance 
except that the continued vote in such leading states as New York, 
Pennsylvania and Ohio indicated the Prohibition party was per- 
sistent and determined. There was an increasing tendency to 
nominate local tickets and some candidates for minor local of- 
fices were elected. In 1878 a number of Congressional districts 
made nominations. In the Eleventh Congressional District of 
Illinois, 3,034 votes were cast for Mr. Pogue. In 1879 Minnesota 
gave 2,808 votes to W. W. Satterlee for Governor. 

The service of the Prohibition party at this period is by no 
means to be measured by the votes which were received and 
counted for it. It agitated the question. The presentation of 
a ticket at each election acted as a reminder in every campaign 
that here was an impending issue which would sooner or later 
have to be settled. 

The fact that some men were willing to dedicate their votes 
for the promotion of this cause evidenced the importance which 
those men attached to the issue. 

The party was making sentiment for prohibition. From the 
beginning it upheld the ideal of complete prohibition without 
compromise. Furthermore, its leaders had analyzed the weak- 
ness of the earlier prohibition efforts and had found the vulnera- 
ble point to have been in the lack of a united constituency to 
elect officers to enforce the law, in other words, the lack of a party 
to uphold and enforce the law. 

It compelled those opposed to liquor to give attention to the 
political aspects of the problem. It made the question of party 
action the most discussed one at nearly every gathering of tem- 
perance people, notably so at the seventh and eighth National 
Temperance Conventions in 1873 and 1875. 

It produced a deeper study of the liquor problem. While some 
temperance groups were superficially making emotional appeals 
to rescue a few individuals from the clutches of a governmentally 
protected traffic, the Prohibitionists were directing their attention 
to the source of the problem. 


116 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Throughout the history of the Prohibition movement the Pro- 
hibition party has furnished the ablest students of the problem. 

In this period it passed the test of opposition and ridicule. 
It was assailed on every side. Some said the liquor question was 
a moral question alone. Some said: “Don’t take temperance into 
politics.” Some said: “The time is not ripe.’ Different per- 
sons advocated almost every possible remedy other than that of 
the Prohibition party. In addition, Prohibitionists were bitterly 
fought by the, politicians of the larger parties and by the liquor 
element. In spite of all they persisted. 


CONTEMPORARY TEMPERANCE ACTIVITY 


The Woman’s Crusade and the Woman's Christian Temperance 
Union 


The most remarkable movement of the decade was the 
Woman’s Crusade in 1873-1874. Followed as it was by the 
organization of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union it 
proved to be most far-reaching. 

The Crusade was an evidence of the power of prayer to over- 
come evil. It was an expression of concerted moral power 
of a character without precedent in the history of the country. 
Prior to this time there had been some women who had taken 
part in temperance work, in fact, there had been over thirty 
women who were members of the first Prohibition party conven- 
tion in 1869, and there had been a few scattered places ‘where 
there had been concerted women’s temperance work, but never 
before on a wide scale. 

The Woman’s Crusade originated almost simultaneously in sev- 
eral towns where lectures had been given by Dr. Dio Lewis in 
December, 1873. Dr. Lewis told the story of how in his boyhood 
in his native town near Auburn, New York, a band of mothers 
driven almost to desperation by the‘ravages of drink determined 
upon prayer and personal intercession with the dram-sellers. A 
band of praying women standing with clasped hands in a circle 
just reaching around the auditorium of the little church in which 
they met had pledged each other before God never to cease their 
labors and prayers until the last drinking-place was closed. They 
made a little banner and went out every day to the saloons and 
prayed and labored with each liquor-seller, urging him to quit 
his business. In a short time all five dealers had yielded. This 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 117 


hadeoccurred in the*thirties, before the Washingtonian Movement, 
and the town had thereafter remained free from saloons. 

This was the method he urged upon the women of the towns 
where he lectured. *Fredonia, New York, was where the first 
efforts were made. Hullsboro, Ohio, is generally credited with 
being the birthplace of the Woman’s Crusade. There, under the 
leadership of Mrs. E. J. Thompson, the daughter of a former 
Governor of Ohio, a band of women after prayer and the read- 
ing of the 146th Psalm, which came to be known as the Crusade 
Psalm, proceeded from the church to the saloons of the town, 
where with prayers and pleadings they appealed to the saloon- 
keepers to quit their traffic. Till the middle of the following June 
they visited the saloons almost daily. 

The first place where full success in the closing of all the 
saloons was achieved was Washington Court House, Ohio, where 
Dr. Lewis spoke on December 24, 1873, the day following his 
address at Hillsboro. Here a praying band was formed and fifty- 
two women enrolled their names as a Committee of Visitation. 
A Committee of Responsibility composed of thirty-seven men 
was also appointed. An appeal to the liquor-sellers was prepared 
and was subsequently generally used over the country. It was 
as follows: 


Knowing, as you do, the fearful effects of intoxicating drinks, we, 
the women of Washington Court House, after earnest prayer and 
deliberation, have decided to appeal to you to desist from this 
ruinous traffic that our husbands and brothers, and especially our 
sons, be no longer exposed to this terrible temptation, and that we 
may no longer see them led into those paths which go down to sin 
and bring both soul and body to destruction. We appeal to the 
better instincts of your hearts, in the name of desolate homes, 
blasted hopes, ruined lives, widowed hearts, for the honor of our 
community, for our happiness, for the good name of our town, 
in‘the name of God who will judge you and us, for the sake of your 
own souls which are to be saved or lost. We beg, we implore you 
to cleanse yourselves from this heinous sin, and place yourselves 
in the ranks of those who are striving to elevate and ennoble them- 
selves and their fellow men. And to this we ask you to pledge 
yourselves.® 


Each morning the women assembled in the church and, after 
prayer, marched with singing to the different saloons. Mean- 
while, other women with many men remained in prayer at the 
church. The tolling of the church bell every few minutes called 
attention to all within hearing that the crusade was on. The 

3 Mrs. Matilda G. Carpenter, The Crusade at Washington Court House, p. 35. 


118 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


first day they met with no marked success. After an evening 
mass meeting and a morning prayer meeting the second day’s 
work was begun. The saloon doors were shut against them and 
the women knelt in the snow on the pavement and the second 
day was marked by the first complete surrender by a saloon- 
keeper of all his stock of liquors in answer to prayer. He gave 
his entire stock into the women’s hands to do with it as they 
chose. Hundreds of people witnessed the pouring of the liquor 
into the streets while the bells rang and the women sang and 
prayed. The next day there was another surrender and another 
large stock of liquor was destroyed. New victories were re- 
ported each day until after eight days all the eleven liquor-dealers 
had surrendered and quit the business. The next week the liquor 
interests of Cincinnati offered $5,000 to break down the move- 
ment. <A stock of liquor was forwarded and a man undertook 
to reopen a saloon but within four days he too gave up. 

The Crusade attracted wide attention. Representatives of city 
dailies gave full reports and the movement spread to many other 
towns and cities in Ohio and in other states. Hundreds of sa- 
loons were closed, in many towns none were left. The consump- 
tion of liquor decreased and the internal revenue fell off. 

For about six months the Crusade fires burned and then died 
down. Although it resulted in temporarily closing many saloons, 
so long as the sale of liquor was permitted by law there were 
always men who would open up other saloons. Even in Wash- 
ington Court House where every saloon had been closed, within 
fifteen months after the beginning of the Crusade there were 
more saloons than there had been before. 

A permanent result of the Crusade was the organization of 
the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1874. Many 
able, consecrated women had been baptized into temperance work 
in the Crusade. At a meeting at Chautauqua, New York, in 
August, 1874, steps were taken for the calling of a national 
organizing convention which was held at Cleveland, November 
18 to 20, 1874. Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing was the presiding 
officer at both the Chautauqua and Cleveland meetings. Dele- 
gates from seventeen states were present at the Cleveland con- 
vention. 

Mrs, Annie Wittenmeyer, of Pennsylvania, was the first presi- 
dent and Miss Frances E. Willard was chosen corresponding 
secretary. Miss Willard became president in 1879. A com- 
prehensive program with many departments of work was adopted 
and within a few years the Woman’s Christian Temperance 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 119 


Union became a remarkably widespread and effective organiza- 
tion. By 1880 the paid membership was 44,412 which rapidly 
increased in the years following. 


Other Temperance Organizations 


The Good Templar Order had a phenomenal growth in the 
sixties and until about 1876, reaching a world-wide membership 
of 617,733. But in 1876 there was a division, largely over the 
question of the admission of negroes, and there was a rapid 
decline. Under the leadership of John B. Finch the two factions 
were brought together in 1887. 

The order of the Sons of Temperance, the pioneer national 
total abstinence society which before the Civil War had a mem- 
bership of nearly a quarter of a million, also declined. The mem- 
bership went down from 91,814 in 1870 to 52,408 in 1880, but 
by 1888 it rose again to 79,158. | 

Beginning early in the decade there arose another moral suasion 
pledge-signing movement somewhat similar to the Washingtonian 
Movement of 1840. Multitudes signed the pledge. 

There were really two similar movements, each under a dif- 
ferent leader. One was the red ribbon movement with a red 
ribbon as a badge led by Dr. Henry A. Reynolds. The other was 
the blue ribbon movement with the blue ribbon as a badge led by 
Francis Murphy. Pledge-signing campaigns in various sections 
were often followed by the organization of reform clubs and 
in some states a state organization was formed. Some of the 
leaders were characterized by unreasoning opposition to legal 
methods of solution and narrowly confined themselves to merely 
personal temperance. Most Prohibitionists cooperated so far 
as efforts to get men to sign the pledge were concerned, but the 
limitations of the movement soon became apparent when many 
of the pledge signers fell away owing to the constant tempta- 
tion of the legally protected saloon. 

In blue ribbon meetings in Pittsburgh it was estimated that 
165,000 people signed the pledge and 500 saloons were closed 
for want of patronage. However, within two years after Mr. 
Murphy’s departure there were reported 321 more saloons in 
Pittsburgh than before his work began. 

While the immediate effect was to hinder the progress of pro- 
hibition, the ultimate effect was to lead many to realize its neces- 
sity. 

It is significant that nearly all the great outstanding total ab- 


120 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


stinence leaders came sooner or later to be strong advocates of 
prohibition. Father Mathew, the great Irish temperance apostle, 
John B. Gough, the best known temperance lecturer in the later 
middle period of the nineteenth century, Mother Thompson, the 
leader of the Woman’s Crusade, all came to perceive the limita- 
tions of moral suasion alone and became strong champions of 
prohibition. 

The decade closed with liquor in almost complete control of 
politics and government and with but few tangible results to give 
encouragement to prohibition workers. They were compelled to 
live by faith. 


THE LITERATURE OF THE DECADE 


The best book of the period was Alcohol and the State, 1877, 
411 pp., by Judge Robert C. Pitman, published by the National 
Temperance Society and now out of print, but to be found in 
many libraries. It 1s one of the best books in the entire history 
of the movement. 

Another epoch-making book was Our Wasted Resources, 
1876, 201 pp., by Dr. William Hargreaves. This was the first 
of several books dealing with the economic evils of the liquor traf- 
fic. The author dedicated his book to James Black. It had a 
large influence on the prohibition argument. Thereafter the 
economic evils of the liquor traffic were increasingly emphasized. 
Dr. Hargreaves followed Our Wasted Resources by another book 
entitled Worse Than Wasted, 98 pp. The two books subsequently 
were published in one volume. 

Of the distinctive party literature, besides the platform, ad- 
dresses to the people and state addresses in some states, the best 
pamphlets were by Russell, Black and Stewart. John Russell’s 
leading pamphlets were: dn Adequate Remedy for a National 
Evil, The Traffic versus Political Economy and Is a Prohibition 
Party a Feasible and Reliable Agency for Securing the Enact- 
ment and Execution of Prolibitory Laws? 

James Black prepared an able paper for the International Tem- 
perance Conference in 1876, “Is There a Necessity for a Pro- 
hibition Party?” It is found in the Centennial Temperance 
Volume and was also republished in pamphlet form. In 1880 
he wrote a Brief History of the Prohibition Reform Party of 
forty-eight pages. 

Gideon T. Stewart published a number of prohibition addresses 


THE DECADE OF THE SEVENTIES 121 


which in 1904 were collected and published in a volume entitled 
The Prolubition Party Agamst the Rum Power. 

The Living Issue published what was called the Condensed 
Prolubition Library, which was a series of pamphlet articles cov- 
ering different vital phases of the question. They were published 
together, 70 pp. 

In 1879 appeared the first edition of the Non-Partisanship, or 
Do Not Take Temperance into Politics by an unnamed author, 
which was composed chiefly of extracts from reports of the an- 
nual congresses of the United States Brewers’ Association to- 
gether with vigorous comments thereon. Its effect was to arouse 
the reader to a realization of the alarming extent to which the 
brewers had taken the question into politics and the ascendancy 
in politics which they had attained. It demolished the argument 
of some timid temperance men that the temperance question 
should not be taken into politics. A second and larger edition 
brought down to date was published in 1887. The author was 
Miss C. M. Victor. 

The Centennial Temperance Volume, 1876, 900 pp., contains 
the proceedings and numerous essays and reports prepared for 
the International Temperance Conference of 1876, 

Proceedings of the Seventh National Temperance Convention, 
1873, and the Eighth National Temperance Convention, 1875, 
give not only the proceedings but also the essays prepared for 
those conventions, some of which are very good. The National 
Temperance Conventions of 1865, 1868, 1873, 1875, 1881 and 
1891, the International Temperance Conference of 1876, the 
Centennial Temperance Conference of 1885, and the World’s 
Temperance Congress of 1893 were all held under the auspices 
of the National Temperance Society and the reports of all these 
are available. 

The National Temperance Society from 1866 to 1916 also 
published nearly every year an annual report, and also a National 
Temperance Almanac each year. It published a large number of 
books and pamphlets including a number of books of fiction and 
books for young people. 

Two English authors, Dawson Burns and F. R. Lees, published 
volumes which had an influence here. Together they published 
a Temperance Bible Commentary, 1870, 469 pp. Separately their 
leading books were: Dawson Burns, The Bases of the Temper- 
ance Reform, 1872, 206 pp., and Christendom and the Drink 
Curse, 1875, 432 pp. F. R. Lees wrote The Textbook of Tem- 


122 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


perance, 1869, 312 pp., and National Intemperance and the 
Remedy, 1871, 96 pp. Subsequently his temperance writings 
were published in ten volumes. 

Another book of considerable merit was Rum and Rin, 1879, 
207 pp:, by D. R. Dungan, of Iowa. 

Among the leading pamphlets were: National Prohibition Re- 
form Party; Candidates, Platforms and Addresses, 1876, 24 pp.; 
George H. Vibbert, Personal Liberty, 1875, 8 pp.; Joseph Cook, 
Relation of the Temperance Reform to the Future of Democracy 
in the United States, 1870, 16 pp. 

There were a number of addresses and sermons reprinted as 
pamphlets after being published in some of the Prohibition 
papers. One of the ablest series of articles was by William 
Goodell, who wrote about twenty articles on “The Maine Law 
and Its Lessons” which were published in the Delaware Signal 
in 1878. In these he gave strong reasons for the Prohibition 
party. He had been a pioneer, having started in 1827 the 
second temperance paper in the history of the movement. 

There were a number of newspapers supporting the party, some 
of them ably edited, all of them inadequately supported and cir- 
culated, and most of them short-lived. Among them were John 
Russell’s Peninsular Herald of Detroit, which continued until 
1873; The Northern Independent, the second paper to support 
the party, published by William Hosmer at Auburn, N. Y.; the 
Prohibition Era of Cleveland, published in the early seventies 
by A. T. Proctor; The Living Issue of New York, which was 
the leading paper during most of the decade, founded in 1873; 
The Delaware Signal, the leading organ of the party in Ohio, 
likewise founded in 1873 with Thomas Evans, Jr., as editor; the 
Temperance Journal of Connecticut; the Liberty Blade and the 
Minnesota Radical in Minnesota; and the Voice of Liberty of 
New York. In 1871 there was a paper in Pennsylvania called 
the Vindicator, and beginning in 1878 one in St. Louis called the 
National Prohibitionist, ably edited for several years by Frank 
M. Bemis. There were several other state or national papers of 
greater or less importance. 

The leading national general temperance paper was the Na- 
tional Temperance Advocate, the organ of the National Temper- 
ance Society, published from 1866 to the present time, since 1898 
under the name of The National Advocate. 


Chapter VII 
THE EARLY EIGHTIES 


The third national nominating convention was held in Cleve- 
land, Ohio, June 17, 1880. Twelve states were represented 
by 142 delegates. 

After devotional exercises conducted by Dr. H. A. Thompson, 
President of Otterbein University, the convention was called to 
order by James Black, Chairman of the National Committee, 
who read the call and delivered an able address which was widely 
circulated during the campaign. 

One striking paragraph was as follows: 


The drink traffic exists only by the power of civil law. Natural 
law, which, says Blackstone, “requires that we should live honestly, 
hurt nobody, and render to every one his due,’ is opposed to it. 
Common law, which, says the same great writer, “declares that no 
man has a right to use his property to the injury of. another, and 
that the consent of the party injured is no mitigation of the offence,” 
is opposed. Moral law, which requires that we “love our neighbor 
as ourselves,” is opposed. The law of God, which says “Thou shalt 
not kill,” is opposed. The traffic in these drinks is an illegitimate 
branch of commerce, and the law should so declare it. Liquor- 
dealers shuuld be treated as criminals, and the grogshop should be 
abated as a pestilent nuisance. To secure these ends the legislative, 
executive and judicial departments of government must be in the 
hands of those favorable to such policy. 


Dr. H. A. Thompson was chosen Temporary Chairman. For 
Temporary Secretaries Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge, President of 
the W. C. T. U. of Ohio, and Mrs. Mattie McClellan Brown, of 
Pennsylvania, were elected. 

The permanent chairman was Dr. A. A. Miner, of Massachu- 
Seits, 2 

The personnel of the convention was such as to command the 
respect and elicit the encomiums of the press representatives pres- 
ent, even at a time when the newspapers were usually belittling 
the Prohibitionists. The Cleveland Herald had a series of pen 


pictures of a number of the leading delegates in which it gave 
123 


124 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


high praise to Dr. H. A. Thompson, Dr. A. A. Miner, of Boston; 
Dr. W. K. Brown and Mrs. Mattie McClellan Brown, of Pennsyl- 
vania; Hon. A. A. Barker, a former member of Congress from 
Pennsylvania; Hon. Rodney French, of Massachusetts; Hon. 
William Bones, who had introduced a prohibitory bill in the Ohio 
Senate twenty years before; Mrs. A. J. Gordon, of Massa- 
chusetts; D. P. Sagendorph, of Michigan; C. A. Hovey, of 
Massachusetts; Ferd Schumaker, of Ohio, and others. 

The platform contained a strong arraignment of the liquor 
traffic as the enemy of the individual, the home, the community 
and the state and of the political parties behind which the traf- 
fic was entrenched. The only issue advocated besides prohibition 
was the ballot for women. 


THE PLATFORM OF I880 


The Prohibition Reform party of the United States, organized 
in the name of the people to revive, enforce and perpetuate in the 
Government the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, sub- 
mits for the suffrages of all good citizens the following platform of 
national reforms and measures: 

1. In the examination and discussion of the temperance ques- 
tion it has been proven, and is an accepted truth, that alcoholic 
drinks, whether fermented, brewed or distilled, are poisonous to 
the healthy human body, the drinking of which is not only needless 
but hurtful, necessarily tending to form intemperate habits, increas- 
ing greatly the number, severity and fatal termination of diseases, 
weakening and deranging the intellect, polluting the affections, 
hardening the heart and corrupting the morals, depriving many of 
reason and still more of its healthful exercise, and annually bring- 
ing down large numbers to untimely graves, producing in the chil- 
dren of many who drink a predisposition to intemperance, insanity 
and various bodily and mental diseases, causing a diminution of 
strength, feebleness of vision, fickleness of purpose and premature 
old age, and producing to future generations a deterioration of 
moral and physical character. The legalized importation, manu- 
facture and sale of intoxicating drinks minister to their use and 
teach the erroneous and destructive sentiment that such use is right, 
thus tending to produce and perpetuate the above-mentioned evils. 
Alcoholic drinks are thus the implacable enemy of man as an in- 
dividual. 

2. That the liquor traffic is to the home equally an enemy, prov- 
ing a disturber and a destroyer of its peace, prosperity and happi- 
ness, taking from it the earnings of the husband, depriving the 
dependent wife and children of essential food, clothing and educa- 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 125 


tion, bringing into it profanity and abuse, setting at naught the vows 
of the marriage altar, breaking up the family and sundering chil- 
dren from parents, and thus destroying one of the most beneficent 
institutions of our Creator, and removing the sure foundation for 
good government, national prosperity and welfare. 

3. That to the community it is equally an enemy, producing 
demoralization, vice and wickedness; its places of sale being often 
resorts for gambling, lewdness and debauchery, and the hiding places 
of those who prey upon society, counteracting the efficacy of re- 
ligious effort and of all means for the intellectual elevation, moral 
purity, social happiness and the eternal good of mankind, without 
rendering any counteracting or compensating benefits, being in its 
influence and effect evil and only evil and that continually. 

4. That to the State it is equally an enemy, legislative inquiry, 
judicial investigation and the official reports of all penal, reforma- 
tory and dependent institutions showing that the manufacture and 
sale of such beverages is the promoting cause of intemperance, 
crime and pauperism, of demands upon public and private charity; 
imposing the larger part of taxation, thus paralyzing thrift, industry, 
manufacture and commercial life, which but for it would be un- 
necessary; disturbing the peace of the streets and highways; filling 
prisons and poorhouses; corrupting politics, legislation and the 
execution of the laws; shortening lives, diminishing health, industry 
and productive power in manufacture and art; and is manifestly 
unjust as well as injurious to the community upon which it is im- 
posed, and contrary to all just views of civil liberty, as well as 
a violation of a fundamental maxim of our common law to use your 
own property or liberty so as not to injure others. 

5. That it is neither right nor politic for the State to afford legal 
protection to any traffic or system which tends to waste the re- 
sources, to corrupt the social habits and to destroy the health and 
lives of the people; that the importation, manufacture and sale of 
intoxicating beverages is proven to be inimical to the true interests 
of the individual, the home, the community, the State, and destruc- 
tive to the order and welfare of society, and ought, therefore, to 
be classed among crimes to be prohibited. 

6. That in this time of profound peace at home and abroad the 
entire separation of the general Government from the drink traf- 
fic, and its Prohibition in the District of Columbia, the Territories 
and in all places and ways over which, under the Constitution, Con- 
gress has control or power, is a political issue of first importance to 
the peace and prosperity of the nation. ‘There can be no stable 
peace and protection to personal liberty, life or property until se- 
cured by National and State Constitutional Prohibition enforced 
by adequate laws. 

7. That all legitimate industries require deliverance from the 
taxation and loss which the liquor traffic imposes upon them, and 


126 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


financial or other legislation cannot accomplish so much to increase 
production and cause demand for labor, and as a result, for the 
comfort of living, as the suppression of this traffic would bring to 
thousands of homes as one of its blessings. 

8. That the administration of Government and the execution 
of the laws being by and through political parties, we arraign the 
Republican party, which has been in continuous power in the nation 
for twenty years, as being false to its loudly proclaimed principles 
of “equal justice to all and special favors to none” and of protec- 
tion to the weak and dependent; and that through moral cowardice 
it has been and is unable to correct the mischief which the trade 
in liquor has constantly inflicted upon the industrial interests, com- 
merce and social happiness of the people. On the contrary, its 
subjection to and complicity with the liquor interest appears (1) By 
the facts that 5,652 distilleries, 2,830 breweries, and 175,266 places 
of sale of the poisonous liquors, involving an annual waste, direct 
and indirect, to the nation of $1,500,000,000 and a sacrifice of 
100,000 lives, have under its legislation grown up and been fostered 
as a legitimate source of revenue; (2) That during its history six 
Territories have been organized and five States admitted into the 
Union with constitutions provided and approved by Congress, but 
the Prohibition of this debasing and destructive traffic has not been 
provided for, nor even the people given at the time of admission 
the power to forbid it in any one of them; (3) That its history 
further shows that not in a single instance has an original Prohibi- 
tory law been enacted in any State controlled by it, while in four 
States so governed the laws found on its advent to power have been 
repealed; (4) That at its National Convention of 1872 it declared 
as a part of its party faith that “it disapproves of a resort to un- 
constitutional laws for the purpose of removing evils by interference 
with the right not surrendered by the people to either State or Na- 
tional Government” which the author of this plank says “was 
adopted by the Platform Committee with the full and explicit under- 
standing that its purpose was the discountenancing of all so-called 
temperance (Prohibitory) and Sunday laws”; (5) That notwith- 
standing the deep interest felt by the people during the last quadren- 
nium in the legal suppression of the drink curse, shown by many 
forms of public expression, this party at its last National Con- 
vention held in Chicago during the present month, in making new 
promises by its platform, says not one word on this question, nor 
holds out any hope of relief. 

9g. That we arraign also the Democratic party as unfaithful and 
unworthy of reliance on this question; for although not clothed with 
power, but occupying the relation of the opposition party during 
twenty years past, strong in numbers and organization, it has allied 
itself with the liquor-traffickers and has become in all the States 
of the Union their special political defenders. In its National Con- 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 127 


vention in 1876, as an article of its political faith, it declared against 
Prohibition and just laws in restraint of the trade in drink by saying 
it was opposed to what it was pleased to call “‘all sumptuary laws.” 
The National party (another name for the Greenback-Labor party ) 
has been dumb on the question. 

to. That the drink-traffickers, realizing that history and experi- 
ence, in all ages, climes and conditions of men, declare their business 
destructive of all good, and finding no support from the Bible, 
morals or reason, appeal to misapplied law for their justification, 
and entrench themselves behind the evil elements of political party 
for defense, party tactics and party inertia having become the 
battling forces protecting this evil. 

11. That in view of the foregoing facts and history we cordially 
invite all voters, without regard to former party affiliation, to unite 
with us in the use of the ballot for the abolition of the drink system 
now existing under the authority of our National and State Gov- 
ernments. We also demand as a right that women, having in other 
respects the privileges of citizens, shall be clothed with the ballot. 
for their protection, and as a rightful means for a proper settle- 
ment of the liquor question. 

12. That to remove the apprehension of some who allege that a 
loss of public revenue would follow the suppression of a direct trade, 
we confidently point to the experience of governments abroad and 
at home, which shows that thrift and revenue from the consumption 
of legitimate manufactures and commerce have so largely followed 
the abolition of drink as to fully supply all loss of liquor taxes. 

13. That we recognize the good providence of Almighty God, 
Who has preserved and prospered us as a nation, and, asking for 
His Spirit to guide us to ultimate success, we will look for it, relying 
upon His omnipotent arm. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. Neal.Dow was nominated “by a unanimous 
rising vote with cheer upon cheer and the doxology.’’ His name 
was presented to the convention by James Black who had been 
corresponding with him and had received his consent to accept the 
nomination. There was no man in the nation whose name was so 
thoroughly identified with the cause of prohibition as Neal Dow. 
He had been the pioneer leader in securing the adoption of pro- 
hibition in Maine. Six times he had appeared before the Legis- 
lature before he secured the enactment of the Maine Law of 1851. 
No one had been more indefatigable and unrelaxing in his labors. 
When legislators proved unresponsive he went to the people. He 
spent months of time traveling thousands of miles over the state 
winning the voters to his cause. 


1 B&B 


128 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


After the enactment of the law he was active at all times 
for its enforcement. He was twice mayor of Portland and twice 
a member of the Legislature. He was the leading advocate 
and exponent of the cause and visited England three times in its 
behalf. 

He was born in Portland, Maine, in 1804. His parents and 
ancestors for generations were Friends. He was educated in pub- 
lic and private schools, at the Portland Academy and at the 
Friends’ Academy, New Bedford, Massachusetts. When a young 
man he became interested in the temperance cause and was an 
active member of the early temperance societies. An incident 
which intensified his interest and deepened his determination to 
fight the liquor traffic occurred about 1835. A friend of marked 
ability, a Harvard graduate, had become a victim of the liquor 
appetite. He had made several unsuccessful efforts to reform. 
During one of his periods of sobriety Dow had assisted him to 
secure an official position the retention of which was conditioned 
upon his keeping sober. In the vicinity of his office, however, 
was a so-called respectable liquor shop which was furnishing 
him liquor. Appealed to by the young man’s wife Dow believed 
that if this shop would refuse to sell him the liquor his pride 
would keep him from the lower dens. Dow, therefore, went 
to the liquor-seller and laid the case before him, appealing to him 
in behalf of the young man. The liquor-seller replied substan- 
tially as follows: 


Mr. Dow, you attend to your business and I will look after mine. 
I am licensed to sell liquor, have paid my money for the privilege. 
That money helps to pay your taxes, and it is small business for 
you to try to prevent me from obtaining the business I have a right 
to under the law. If that young man comes in here in a sober 
condition and asks for liquor I have a legal right to sell it to 
him and shall do so, and I do not want you around here whining 
about it. 


Disappointed, indignant and aroused, Dow determined that 
sooner or later he would see that the liquor-seller and all like 
him should be compelled to cease their infamous traffic. This in- 
cident deepened Dow’s already matured belief that the liquor 
traffic was the source of infinite evils and that there was no other © 
field where work was demanded for human progress in which 
laborers were so much needed. 

He made the decision to devote his life to prohibition. As 
he continued his vision broadened and his consecration deepened. 
He became the incarnation of his cause. 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 129 


During the Civil War he entered the service of his country 
as a Colonel of Volunteers in 1861. The next year he was 
commissioned Brigadier-General. He was twice wounded in 
battle and while recuperating from his wounds was captured and 
sent to Libby Prison where he was kept for eight months. 

During the years after the war when the liquor power in 
politics had reduced the number of prohibition states to only 
three, with imperfect and vacillating enforcement in those three, 
General Dow was compelled to fight for even a moderate degree 
of enforcement in Maine and upon him devolved the task of 
answering the almost unending stream of malicious and men- 
dacious attacks upon the Maine Law. 

He lived to the ripe old age of ninety-three and was greatly 
honored and respected by the prohibitionists of all lands. 

For Vice-President. Dr. H. A. Thompson, of Ohio, was 
nominated by acclamation. He was placed in nomination by 
Mrs. Mattie McClellan Brown. 

Born in Center County, Pennsylvania, in 1837, he was gradu- 
ated from Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1858 and studied 
at the Western Theological Seminary. In 1872 he was elected 
president of Otterbein University, Westerville, Ohio, the leading 
college of the United Brethren Church. He became a Prohibi- 
tionist in 1874 and in 1877 was the Prohibition candidate for 
Governor of Ohio. He was very active in behalf of prohibition 
both on the platform and in literary labors and was one of the 
ablest men of the movement. Throughout his life he continued 
his interest and activity, serving both as candidate and in various 
official capacities. He died in 1920. 


THE CAMPAIGN OF I880 


For the third time the campaign was very inadequate. Neal 
Dow was too advanced in years to make an active canvass. How- 
ever, more literature was circulated than in previous years. Ar- 
rangements were made with the National Temperance Society 
and Publication House for the printing of the campaign docu- 
ments. 

One of the documents was Neal Dow’s Letter of Acceptance. 
Among other things he said: 


In our country there can be no change in any public policy which 
depends upon law, unless the people desiring the change shall in- 
dicate their pleasure through the ballot-box. Parties and their 
policies come into power among us and go out of power only through 


130 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the ballot-box. There is no other way by which the people can 
express their will effectively. All important questions of public 
policy are decided in that manner only. . 

Aside from its bearing upon the moral and religious welfare of 
the people I consider the suppression of the liquor traffic of far 
greater political importance than any other now claiming the at- 
tention of the country. 


The small vote of 9,678 did not indicate the real strength of 
the party. It suffered from a dastardly scheme of unscrupulous 
politicians to destroy it. Five days before the election a Maine 
Republican paper published an editorial in which it asserted posi- 
tively that Neal Dow had withdrawn as a candidate and was ad- 
vising his followers to vote for Mr. Garfield. This was tele- 
graphed all over the country-and, notwithstanding Mr. Dow 1s- 
sued a positive denial and notified the friends who wired him 
that the report was false and that he was still a candidate, his 
denial was not so widely circulated and the damage had been 
done when it was too late to overcome it. 


1881 


The year 1881 was marked by a decided increase in the Prohi- 

bition’ vote’ in several states, notably in Ohio, Wisconsin and 
‘Michigan. 
' In  QOhio:the temperance people became aroused because the 
Legislature had not only failed to pass a local option measure 
which had been earnestly sought but had altered a Sunday closing 
bill so as to permit the sale of beer and ale on Sunday. This 
meant that saloons were open on Sunday and that they were not 
particular as to what they sold. Furthermore, both old parties 
had adopted planks favoring license. A mass temperance con- 
vention composed of temperance elements of the Republican party 
plus groups of Democrats and Prohibitionists nominated a state 
ticket with A. R. Ludlow as candidate for Governor. The Pro- 
hibition Reform party endorsed the ticket which contained some 
of its own workers and 16,597 votes were pores Many of those 
who left the old bea that year stayed with the Prohibition 
patty. | 

In Wisconsin there was a decided stir. At the preceding ses- 
gion of the Legislature the proposal to submit a state constitu- 
tional amendment had’ been defeated by only two votes and a 
high license law was passéd instead. 

“At the Kepublican state convention in 1881 an effort was made 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 131 


to insert a plank in the platform asking that an amendment be 
submitted to the people. This was defeated. After its defeat 
a group of those present at the convention composed of Samuel 
D. Hastings, H. H. Giles, Theodore D. Kanouse and Eugene W. 
Chafin discussed the question of “What shall we do now?’ 
“Call a convention a week from tomorrow and nominate a ticket 
of our own,” said one of the four. 

A call for a convention was issued and signed by these four 
men. ‘Thirty-nine people attended the convention which was held 
the following week. The convention was held only four weeks 
before election, but it nominated a full ticket with Theodore D. 
Kanouse, who had been the head of the Good Templars, for 
Governor. He received 13,255 votes which was 7.69 per cent 
of all the votes cast. 


THE REORGANIZATION OF THE PARTY 


In 1881-1882 there was substantially a reorganization of the 
party. It was felt that the party had not progressed as rapidly 
as the soundness of its philosophy and the need for it demanded. 
The leaders were looked upon as good political philosophers, but 
not practical political party builders. The party had attracted 
only a small fraction of those who believed in the principle of 
prohibition. Although the total of the highest votes in the dif- 
ferent states since the organization of the party reached nearly 
120,000, less than 50,000 votes had been cast in any one year. 

Notwithstanding the leaders felt the need of building a perma- 
nent united party for the purpose of achieving power and ad- 
ministering the government for the suppression of the liquor 
traffic, only a few were sufficiently dedicated to the task of party 
building to give it their votes continuously. 

Many who voted the ticket at particular elections did so as 
a protest against some glaring pro-liquor action of their accus- 
tomed party. By some the Prohibition party was looked upon 
merely as a club to get better measures or better nominations in 
the old parties. In many cases it did have this effect. 

Throughout its history the Prohibition party has contained 
two classes actuated by distinct purposes. One group was com- 
posed of deep students of our governmental system who were 
greatly impressed with the need of a party to achieve and espe- 
cially to enforce prohibition; the other group was composed of 
those who voted for it chiefly as a protest against the existing 
political situation, or because they could not conscientiously give 


132 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


their support to any of the larger political parties at that par- 
ticular election. 

In the early eighties there was a feeling also that there should 
be a change of name. Some thought that the term prohibition 
as a party name gave the impression of a single idea and to some 
people it gave a negative, repressive suggestion rather than a con- 
structive one. 

At the Lake Bluff Convocation, a conference held near 
Chicago, in August, 1881, some influential leaders who had been 
active in behalf of the principle of prohibition, but not promi- 
nently identified with the party, came to realize the imperative 
need of a party, but they also desired a more vigorous and more 
aggressive championship. A committee composed of Colonel 
George W. Bain, of Kentucky, Miss Frances E. Willard, of 
Illinois, and A. J. Jutkins and R. W. Nelson, of the same state, 
was appointed to organize a party by the name of the Home 
Protection Party. It was to be a political party whose platform 
would be based upon constitutional and statutory prohibition of 
the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the state and 
nation. 

The name Home Protection had been used for several years 
by the W.C.T.U. in connection with petitions in behalf of women 
voting on the liquor question. 

In 1877 a Home Protection petition had been presented to 
Congress by the officers of the W.C.T.U. asking that in the 
territories and the District of Columbia the sale of alcoholic 
drinks should be legalized only ‘“‘when a majority of the men 
by their votes and women by their signatures should ask for the 
legalizing of such sale.” In 1879 a Home Protection petition 
containing 180,000 names had been presented to the Legislature 
of Illinois asking the ballot for women upon the liquor question. 
In some states full suffrage had been asked. 

A. joint national convention was held in Farwell Hall, Chicago, 
on August 23 and 24, 1882. The convention had been called 
by the Chairman of the National Prohibition party, the Home 
Protection party, the Lake Bluff Convocation, and the People’s 
Call sent out by the National Liberator, a newspaper published 
by Rk. W. Nelson. ‘Twenty-two states were represented by 341 
delegates. Theodore D. Kanouse of Wisconsin was chairman, 
and Mrs. Mary T. Lathrap and Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge were 
secretaries. 

The convention gave a thorough consideration to the various 
aspects of a party for prohibition and with the exception of the 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 133 


delegates from Iowa, who opposed a separate party, entire har- 
mony prevailed. The groups were united under the name of the 
Prohibition Home Protection Party. Those who had been mem- 
bers of the Prohibition Reform party were favorable to the 
coalition. They had in mind the anti-slavery parallel and re- 
membered how the anti-slavery parties had progressed from one 
name to another, Liberty, Free Soil and Republican, with new 
elements each time, and the Prohibitionists hoped the action would 
bring them a step nearer victory. 

A new national committee was formed, with some additions 
and some changes in the personnel. Gideon T. Stewart, who 
since 1880 had been Chairman of the National Committee of the 
Prohibition Reform party, was continued as Chairman. The 
Executive Committee was composed of Gideon T. Stewart, Chair- 
man; Samuel D. Hastings, who had served four consecutive 
terms as State Treasurer of the State of Wisconsin and six years 
as the international head of the Good Templars, Treasurer; R. W. 
Nelson, Recording Secretary; Rev. A. J. Jutkins, Corresponding 
Secretary, and Miss Frances E. Willard, National President of 
the W.C.T.U., as the fifth member of the Executive Committee. 

A corps of lecturers was appointed, which included Col. George 
W. Bain, John B. Finch, Miss Willard, Mrs. Mary T. Lathrap, 
Rev. John Russell, Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, and Mrs. Sallie F. 
Chapin. 

The actual effect of the reorganization was to enlarge the party 
by the addition of a large group of the able leaders who were 
being developed in the constitutional amendment campaigns, 
many of whom were destined to perform immeasurable service 
to the cause in the succeeding years. 


JOHN RUSSELL’S PHILOSOPHY 


One of the leading speeches at the convention was made by 
John Russell. Discussing the inability of the larger parties to 
satisfactorily deal with the question, he said: 


Where members of a party are radically and irreconcilably 
divided among themselves on any question, it becomes impossible 
for that party when in power to give positive and effective legisla- 
tion on that question. I give that as a major premise. The minor 
is, members of the Republican or Democratic party, whichever you 
please, are radically divided on the question of prohibiting the liquor 
traffic, therefore it is impossible for either the Democratic or Re- 
publican party to completely prohibit the liquor traffic. 


134 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


In answering the contention which was made, particularly by 
some of the lowa delegates, that it is possible for one of the 
existing parties to bring about prohibition, he acknowledged that 
Kansas and Iowa had secured constitutional amendments and that 
Kansas had secured the appropriate and necessary legislation at 
the hands of a Republican legislature. But, said he: 


The difficulty is just here—In the larger towns and cities there 
are so many liquor men in the Republican party who will make it 
a consideration for remaining in or leaving the party just as soon as 
it shall take action upon that question, that whenever the municipal 
officers undertake the execution of the law, they chancing to be 
Republicans, so many of the liquor men will go over to the Demo- 
cratic party at the next election as to divide the Republicans in the 
local election, and for that reason your municipal officers are timid 
and dare not undertake the execution of the law. 

On the other hand, if the Democratic party chances to be in 
power in the locality and undertakes to execute the law, so many 
of the liquor men will go over to the Republican party where they 
will find some friends, that they will elect a Republican board and 
thus defeat the Democratic party, and thus they will hold the bal- 
ance of power and defeat the enforcement of the law. 

You will thus get contradictory reports from those states and 
it will go out to the discredit of the cause of prohibition through- 
out the whole country as it has done for years in the state of Maine, 
and other states that have tried prohibition, and you will get these 
contradictory reports all over the country and hence has come all 
the force there is in that widely circulated declaration that pro- 
hibition does not prohibit. Prohibition, on the contrary, does pro- 
hibit to some extent and ought to prohibit completely and would 
were it not counteracted by this malcondition of political organiza- 
tion. 


The convention of 1882 adopted a platform for the Prohibition 
Home Protection party very similar in its content to the earlier 
Prohibition platforms. 

In 1882 the party vote forged ahead nearly double what it had 
been, reaching a total of 91,896. 

In New York under the able leadership of A. A. Hopkins, the 
candidate for Governor, 25,783 votes were received. This was 
the largest vote ever given any Prohibition candidate up to that 
time. This was due to the aggressive and effective campaign 
and to the dissatisfaction of temperance Republicans with the 
attitude of their party. As a result of the vote the following 
year the New York State Republican platform contained the 
following plank: 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 135 


We would accede to the desire of a large body of our citizens to 
submit to the voters of the State a Constitutional Amendment in 
regard to the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors. 


Notwithstanding this platform plank, in the succeeding Legis- 
lature submission was defeated in the Assembly by a vote of 63 
to 61. Seventeen Republicans, including Mr. Roosevelt, the 
recognized party leader, broke their party pledge, thus deny- 
ing to the people the opportunity to vote upon constitutional 
prohibition. 

California for the first time polled an appreciable vote when 
5,772 votes were received by Dr. R. H. McDonald. He was 
president of the Pacific Bank of San Francisco, personally popu- 
lar and had given thousands of dollars in prizes to pupils in the 
public schools for essays on the effect of alcohol and tobacco. 

In Illinois Judge John G. Irwin who headed the ticket as 
candidate for State Treasurer received 11,344 votes. 

In Wisconsin there was no election for state officers, but the 
aggregate congressional vote was 14,116, an increase over the 
vote of the year before. 

In 1883 there were elections in only a few states. Michigan 
and New Jersey reached their maximum votes thus far. In New 
York about one-fourth of those who had voted for Hopkins ac- 
cepted the bait of the Republican plank and went back, but there 
remained 18,816 who stood by the party and voted for Frederick 
Gates for Secretary of State. 

In Ohio the vote of 16,597 in 1881 fell to 8,362 in 1883. One 
reason for this was that at the election of 1883 the people were 
voting on the state constitutional amendment. Most of the 
energy was concentrated on the endeavor to carry that and some, 
weak in the faith, urged that the party agitation should not be 
emphasized during that campaign for fear it would offend the 
Republicans and cause them to vote against the amendment. 


THE EARLY CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS 


The prohibition history of this period can be understood only 
in the light of the efforts in many states to obtain the submission 
and adoption of state prohibition constitutional amendments. 

It will be remembered that the prohibitory laws enacted in the 
enact a law, a succeeding legislature could weaken or repeal it. 
fifties were merely statutory. Although one legislature might 
In several states the law had been repealed before there was 
adequate time to test its results. In other states it had been so 


136 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


weakened by amendment as to destroy its efficacy. One example 
of a changing policy had been Massachusetts. That common- 
wealth in 1852 had enacted a prohibitory law. After a varied 
enforcement it was repealed in 1868, reenacted in 1869, amended 
in 1871 to permit the manufacture and sale of beer and malt 
liquors, modified again in 1872, leaving the beer traffic to local 
option, reestablished in 1873 again prohibiting the manufacture 
and sale of beer, and in 1875 was finally repealed and supplanted 
by a license act. 

A statutory law was subject to the multifarious manipulations 
of politics. It might be the victim of corruption, bribery and 
jobbery on the part of the wets or be sacrificed to the political 
interests of politicians or party managers. Its loss might be due 
to the attack of the organized liquor interests from without the 
state or to misleading propaganda from within; it might be due 
to the overconfidence, lack of vigilance or want of organization 
among its friends. Prohibition has always been the object of 
attack by certain groups and its enemies usually have been ex- 
perienced and expert in the manipulation of politics, 

One of the objects of the movement for state constitutional 
prohibition was to place it in the state constitution where it would 
be more stable and permanent. ‘To repeal it would require the 
same difficult procedure as its adoption. In the whole history 
of the prohibition movement there have been only two states 
which have repealed constitutional prohibition; Rhode Island in 
1889 and South Dakota in 1896. Both these repeals were accom- 
panied by astounding political corruption. 

Another virtue of constitutional prohibition is that it has the 
solemn sanction of the people. While the different states have 
different methods of submission, all of which are difficult, all of 
them require a majority vote of the people to adopt the amend- 
ment. Adopting an amendment to a state constitution expresses 
the popular will of the state directly and authoritatively. There 
were other arguments advanced in favor of the method by its 
non-partisan supporters from the standpoint of method which 
will be discussed in a later chapter. In the early eighties prac- 
tically all advocates of prohibition were united in favor of the 
constitutional amendment campaigns. 

Prohibition in the state constitution had been first proposed in 
New York in 1856 just after the prohibitory law had been de- 
clared unconstitutional. Dr. Billy J. Clark, who forty-eight years 
before, in 1808, had founded the first temperance society, was 
one of its earliest advocates. Before 1856, Michigan in 1850 and 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 137 


Ohio in 1851 had each placed an anti-license provision in its 
constitution. In 1861 the New York Legislature passed by more 
than a two-thirds vote of each house a joint resolution for the 
submission of an amendment prohibiting the sale of intoxicating 
liquors as a beverage. It passed the second house in April, 1861, 
exactly one week before Fort Sumter was fired upon. The 
method of submitting an amendment in New York required a 
second passage by the next Legislature. Then the country was 
in the midst of the throes of Civil War and nothing more was 
done. 

This constitutional amendment plan was not again advocated 
until the late seventies. Although in 1876 the Prohibition party 
platform advocated a National Constitutional Amendment, and 
in December of the same year Mr. Blair introduced in Congress 
a limited amendment prohibiting distilled liquor after 1900, it 
was not until 1878 that state constitutional prohibition came to 
be seriously urged, when a few scattered temperance workers in 
Iowa, Kansas and Wisconsin began to agitate in its behalf. 

Kansas. This was the first state to adopt a prohibition con- 
stitutional amendment. It was due in an unusual degree to the 
inspiring leadership of one man, Governor John P. St. John. 

There had been a strong and growing temperance sentiment in 
the state. In 1874 the Prohibition party had nominated its first 
ticket and received 2,277 votes. In 1876 it nominated John P. 
St. John who declined, promising to run in 1878 if the Repub- 
licans did not espouse prohibition that year. In that year he 
received the Republican nomination for Governor and was 
elected. In his message to the Legislature of 1879 he recom- 
mended a’prohibition constitutional amendment, but also recom- 
mended as an immediate measure an improvement in the existing 
weak local option law. ‘The latter seemed likely to be passed as 
submission required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature and few 
of the temperance people, including the Governor himself, were 
hopeful of securing that proportion. A local option measure was 
the utmost that most of the temperance people expected to obtain. 

When, however, the Senate was on the point of passing a 
more stringent local option law, the liquor men, alarmed at the 
prospect and ready to resort to any desperate trick, offered to 
make no opposition to a vote for a constitutional amendment 
provided the local option bill should be dropped. The temperance 
men accepted the offer and the Senate passed unanimously a 
prohibitory constitutional amendment. The liquor men thought 
they could prevent the requisite two-thirds vote in the House or, 


138 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


failing there, they thought that such a radical measure could not 
possibly obtain the required majority of the popular vote. This 
was one of many instances where the liquor side had under- 
estimated the popular feeling against liquor. 

In the House after a dramatic struggle the two-thirds vote 
was obtained and the amendment was submitted to be voted upon 
by the people at the November election, 1880. 

The liquor men opened the campaign by forming the ‘‘People’s 
Grand Protective Union,” and raised a fund of about $100,000. 
Those favoring the amendment organized the Kansas State Tem- 
perance Union with Governor St. John as its president. The 
existing temperance organizations worked hard in the campaign. 
The leading churches declared heartily for the amendment in 
their state denominational meetings, the state Teachers’ Asso- 
ciation endorsed it, the leading organ of the farmers emphati- 
cally supported it, about a dozen of the leading national temper- 
ance speakers concentrated their forces in the campaign and the 
result was that prohibition carried by a majority of 7,998. 

The law went into effect May 1, 1881. Some disputed legal 
questions obstructed enforcement for some months until they 
were decided in favor of the law, but thereafter during the re- 
mainder of Governor St. John’s administration, which lasted 
through 1882, the law was well enforced with the exception of a 
few localities where local officials were strongly opposed to the 
law. 

In May, 1882, Governor St. John delivered an address at Des 
Moines, lowa, when the campaign in that state was on, in which 
he summarized in convincing manner the remarkable benefits 
which had resulted from one year of prohibition. This address 
helped to carry the amendment in Iowa. 

Governor St. John had come to be regarded as the chief apostle 
of prohibition reform. Its success in Kansas was due largely to 
his vigorous championship and effective administration. But at 
the next election, in 1882, he, being a candidate for reelection for 
a third term, was defeated by a Democrat although the candidates 
for the other offices on the Republican ticket were elected. The 
liquor Republicans threw their votes to the Democratic candidate 
for Governor, wielded the balance of power and defeated St. 
John. After that the people of Kansas had a demonstration of 
the contrast in enforcement between an administration support- 
ing the law and one hostile to it. 

Governor St. John, however, was released for a national service 
and entered upon a lecture campaign in which he carried the 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 139 


gospel of prohibition to many other states. He spoke all over 
the country and became nationally known. 

Towa. The next state to vote on a state constitutional amend- 
ment was Iowa, which voted in June, 1882, and carried it by a 
majority of 29,759. 

Back in 1855 lowa had passed a statutory law under a Demo- 
cratic administration and it had been ratified by a popular vote. 
When the Republicans came into power they catered to the 
German vote by amending the law to permit the manufacture 
and sale of beer, wine and cider. This practically obliterated 
prohibition. In 1877 there arose a strong political movement 
for restoring full prohibition to Iowa. The Prohibition party 
had nominated its first state ticket in 1875 but had cast only a 
small vote. In 1877 the Republicans nominated John H. Gear, 
an avowed anti-prohibitionist, for Governor. The Prohibitionists 
nominated Col. Elias Jessup who made a thorough canvass and > 
polled 10,545 votes, which was sufficient to prevent the Repub- 
lican candidate from receiving the majority vote, he being elected 
by only a plurality. This large vote encouraged the Prohibi- 
tionists and alarmed the Republicans. The Prohibitionists had 
been advocating a statutory law as the state constitutional amend- 
ment plan had not been agitated prior to 1878. In 1879 the 
Republicans desired to reelect Governor Gear. They feared to 
offend the increasing number of Prohibitionists who were demon- 
strating their willingness to back their sentiments with their 
votes. They also feared to alienate the liquor vote by committing 
the party to the enactment of a law. So they compromised by 
inserting a plank favoring the submission of a constitutional 
amendment to the people at a special election “in order that the 
entire question of temperance may be settled in a non-partisan 
manner.” 

Many of the Prohibitionists, willing to subordinate their new 
party provided their cause was recognized, were opposed to 
making a separate nomination, But there were some who were 
convinced that the prohibition question could not be “‘settled in a 
non-partisan manner’ and that a law administered by an anti- 
prohibition governor would not be very effective. These nomi- 
nated D. R. Dungan for Governor and in spite of the plank in 
the Republican platform polled a respectable vote sufficient to 
indicate to the politicians that they could not break faith on their 
platform plank. The Legislature of 1880 passed the submission 
resolution and, as the lowa constitution requires the passage of a 
constitutional amendment through two legislatures before sub- 


140 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


mission to the people, it was referred to the Legislature of 1882 
which also approved it and at the election, June 27, 1882, the 
people adopted the amendment by a majority of nearly thirty 
thousand. 

Notwithstanding the victory the constitutional amendment was 
invalidated by the state Supreme Court in the fall of 1882, be- 
cause of a technicality. It was found that a minor amendment 
of three words which had been added to the original text of the 
bill by the House in the Legislature of 1880 did not appear in 
the Legislative Journal as kept by the Clerk of the House. The 
amendment as voted upon by the people was exactly the same as 
passed by both sessions of the Legislature, but because of the 
failure of the clerk to record three words the vote of the people 
was annulled. 

There were many who thought the omission by the subordinate 
clerk was intentional and the fact that in two other states, Indiana 
and Oregon, there was a parallel situation with regard to legis- 
lative clerks invalidating the submission of a prohibition amend- 
ment gave reason for the conclusion that in some of those states 
at least it was a deliberate scheme of the liquor power to head 
off prohibition. 

But notwithstanding constitutional prohibition was thus pre- 
vented from going into effect, the people of Iowa became so 
aroused that they demanded the enactment of a statutory law 
and the next Legislature enacted such a law in 1884. 

The successes of the popular votes in Kansas and Iowa gave a 
big impetus to the constitutional amendment movement and so 
much prohibition enthusiasm was sweeping over the country that 
by the close of the legislative sessions of 1883 there had been no 
less than twenty-one states where a state prohibition constitu- 
tional amendment had been seriously agitated and voted upon in 
the legislature. 

The following is the record of legislative action up to July, 


1883: 


In Kansas, Iowa, Ohio and Maine the Legislatures had voted 
for submission. 

In Oregon in 1883 the amendment passed both houses to be 
submitted to the succeeding Legislature. 

In Indiana it had passed the Legislature of 1881 and passed 
the House in 1883, but lost in the Senate. 

In Pennsylvania in 1881 it had passed the House by 109 to 
59, but failed in the Senate. In 1883 the wets added a com- 
pensation clause which insured its defeat. 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 141] 


In New Jersey the Senate voted for the amendment 11 to Io, 
but it was defeated in the House 29 to 27. 

In Michigan in 1881 it received the required two-thirds vote 
in the Senate, 21 to 10, but in the House fell three votes short, 
63°10) 33. 

The method of amending the state constitution varies in the 
different states. In this period eleven states required a two-thirds 
vote of both houses of one legislature before submission to the 
people. In nine states the majority vote of two successive legis- 
latures was necessary, the adoption of the amendment to be com- 
pleted by a majority vote of the people. Some states required a 
majority of all the voters voting at the election. Others required 
only a majority of those voting on the proposed amendment. 
Rhode Island required a three-fifths vote of the people and there 
were other variations in method. 

In Connecticut, Illinois, West Virginia and Arkansas sub- 
mission passed the House but was defeated in the Senate. 

In Texas it passed the Senate but was defeated in the House. 

In Missouri and Wisconsin it received the vote of a majority 
of the House, but not the necessary two-thirds. In Wisconsin 
100,000 people had petitioned for it in 1880 and more than that 
at the succeeding Legislature. 

In Nebraska it lacked only two votes of passing. 

In New York and Massachusetts it received about 40 per cent 
of the votes of the Legislature. 

In Vermont and Minnesota it also received substantial support. 

Notwithstanding that in a number of the states the politicians 
were successfully utilizing the bicameral system to balance one 
house off against the other and thus please both sides, the progress 
which was being made was bringing the prohibition workers to 
a high point of enthusiasm. 

Ohio. The next state to vote was the state of Ohio, then the 
third in the country in population. There a great moral victory 
was won even though prohibition was not placed in the constitu- 
tion. In Ohio the constitution required that a proposed amend- 
ment should receive a majority of all the votes cast at the election. 
This is a difficult provision because of the fact that it is a char- 
acteristic of American voters that not nearly as many vote on 
questions which are submitted to them at an election as vote on 
the candidates. Even though the negative vote may be small 
the adoption of an amendment is frequently prevented because 
of the failure of the voters to express their judgment. In Ohio 
out of fourteen amendments which had been submitted only one 


142 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


had been adopted. The prohibition amendment voted on in 1883 
received a large majority of the counted votes which were cast 
upon this question, but not sufficient on the face of the returns 
to make a majority of all the votes polled at the general election 
that day. 

Since 1851 Ohio had maintained an anti-license clause in its 
constitution. Originally it had been supposed that depriving the 
liquor-sellers of a license would amount substantially to pro- 
hibition. But those in power did not so interpret it and the liquor 
traffic continued. 

In 1874 an amendment to repeal the anti-license clause and to 
substitute license had been submitted and had been defeated. Of 
those voting on the question a majority of 7,286 voted against 
repeal of the anti-license clause and the license proposal lacked 
61,461 of a constitutional majority of all those voting at the 
election. 

Meanwhile the politicians sought to circumvent the anti-license 
clause by passing laws protecting the liquor traffic under the guise 
of so-called tax laws instead of license laws. In 1880 the Legis- 
lature had passed the Pond Tax Law which was declared uncon- 
stitutional and in 1883 the Republicans passed another tax law 
to take its place called the Scott Tax Law. 

For a number of years there had been a strong prohibition 
sentiment in the state. It was in Ohio where the Woman’s 
Crusade had its effective beginning in 1873 and where it achieved 
its greatest successes. It was in Ohio where the Prohibition party 
had nominated its first local and also its first state ticket in 1869. 
In the last preceding election for Governor in 1881 it had polled 
the Jargest vote it had ever received. up, to this, time) godine 
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which under the leader- 
ship of Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge had attained great strength, 
presented to the Legislature a petition containing 185,000 names 
asking for submission of a prohibition constitutional amendment. 

The growing sentiment could not be entirely ignored by the 
Legislature so the party in power decided to submit the amend- 
ment, but also in order not to alienate the wets it submitted a 
license amendment so that the liquor men might have another 
opportunity to supplant the anti-license clause of the constitution 
with a license provision. 

In addition it passed the Scott Tax Law designed to satisfy 
the conservative temperance elements and to lessen the support 
for the prohibition amendment. Those satisfied with the Scott 
Law would not vote for the amendment and, as adoption required 


THE EARLY EIGHTIES 143 


the majority of all votes cast at the general election, the effect of 
the failure of the Scott Law adherents to vote on the amendment 
was the same as if they had voted against it. 

During the campaign the license amendment had been known 
as the First Amendment and the prohibition amendment as the 
Second Amendment. To make matters still more confusing, 
when the state central committees of the two larger parties held 
a joint meeting to consider how to print the ballots they agreed 
to put the judicial amendment first, the license amendment second 
and the prohibition amendment third. So those temperance 
voters who had been instructed to vote “yes” on the Second 
Amendment, if they followed their instructions, voted for the 
license amendment. 

The day the vote was taken was the day of election for Gov- 
ernor. The Democratic party had a plank against prohibition 
and Mr. Hoadly, the candidate for Governor, who was elected, 
had been a prominent attorney for the liquor interests. Mr. 
Foraker, the Republican candidate, declared: “The principles of 
regulation and taxation are eternal and will stand. And to these 
principles of regulation and taxation of the liquor traffic, be it 
known of all men, the Republican party is unalterably com- 
mitted.’’ Practically all the speakers of prominence of both par- 
ties and the leading papers opposed the prohibition amendment. 

In spite of the tremendous handicaps the moral forces made an 
aggressive and enthusiastic campaign. There were a number of 
nationally prominent speakers who came to the help of Ohio, 
including John P. St. John, John B. Finch, George W. Bain, 
Frances E. Willard and Mrs. Mary T. Lathrap. 

Notwithstanding frauds in the voting and still worse in the 
counting, the official returns from Cincinnati having been held 
back for some days and unquestionably manipulated, the result 
was that a large majority of the voters who voted on the question 
voted for prohibition. 

Of those who voted on the prohibition amendment 323,189 
voted “yes” and 240,975 voted “no,” a majority of 82,214. 
However, it lacked 37,467 of a majority of all the votes polled 
for state candidates and did not become a part of the constitution. 
On the license amendment only 99,849 voted for it and 192,117 
against it. 

Thus three states in succession, Kansas, lowa, and Ohio, gave 
popular majorities for prohibition. 

Maine. The next state to vote was Maine in 1884. She had 
tried prohibition for a third of a century, with the exception of 


144 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


two years, 1856 to 1858, after which it had been reestablished 
by a large popular majority. The people of Maine were in a 
position to know whether prohibition was beneficial and desirable 
or not. They voted to establish prohibition in the Maine con- 
stitution by the overwhelming vote of nearly three to one, 70,783 
to 23,811. 

Rhode Island. The next state to vote on a constitutional 
amendment was Rhode Island in 1886. In that state a three- 
fifths vote of the people was necessary to adopt an amendment. 
Despite this, prohibition received more than the required number. 

There were two other statewide votes prior to 1887 which, 
however, were not upon constitutional amendments. One was a 
plebiscite in that part of Dakota Territory which afterward be- 
came South Dakota. It gave a majority for prohibition. The 
other vote was in North Carolina in 1881, where a prohibitory 
statute had been submitted to the people and defeated. It had 
been badly framed, it was surmised intentionally so. Besides, 
the Republican party made opposition to it a party measure. 
Its state committee issued an address against prohibition. It 
lined up the negro vote almost solidly against the proposal with 
the result that prohibition lost by a heavy majority. 

Thus in the period from 1880 to 1886 out of seven statewide 
votes where the people had the opportunity to express themselves 
directly, six out of the seven states, all but North Carolina, had 
given popular majorities for prohibition. The continued, almost 
unbroken, success which attended the popular votes was com- 
parable only to the great prohibition wave of the early fifties. 
Great hopes and expectations were rife. It looked again as if 
prohibition was going to sweep the country. With the rapid 
growth of the Prohibition party following 1884, by early 1887 
many thought that prohibition would become the dominant issue 
in the national campaign of 1888. 

The limitations of the constitutional amendment plan and the 
reasons for failure to advance will be discussed in Chapter XII. 

Bibliographical Note. For references, see close of Chapter X1. 


Chapter VIII 
THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 


Eighteen eighty-four was a memorable year in the history of 
prohibition. That year the Prohibition party entered a new phase 
and became an aggressive, militant, nation-wide political organ- 
ization. Tens of thousands supported their convictions with 
their ballots, with the result that for the first time prohibition 
obtained recognition as a national issue. It is the year to which 
many of the older Prohibitionists of the present day point with 
pride and satisfaction as the year when they first championed 
the great cause. 

It was the beginning of a period which in many respects is 
the most inspiring in the history of the reform. For a whole- 
hearted devotion to the cause, for deep conviction, for moral 
earnestness, for able championship, for advocacy of high prin- 
ciple and for spontaneous enthusiasm no period has excelled 
it. From the standpoint of great and commanding personalities 
and masterly promulgation of the prohibition philosophy and 
argument the half dozen years following 1884 were in many 
respects the Golden Age of the reform. 

The sweep of prohibition sentiment was evidenced by the 
large growth of the temperance organizations, the resolutions of 
the churches, the election results where the question had been 
submitted and by the extent to which appeals and _ petitions 
had been made to the legislatures to permit the people to vote 
on state constitutional amendments. 

Notwithstanding that on the face of the legislative votes on 
submission near-success seemed to have been achieved in several 
states, the temperance leaders had lost confidence in the dominant 
parties. In some states, support in the legislatures sufficient to 
encourage the non-partisan temperance men had been given but 
submission had been lost. In sixteen Republican states where 
submission had been strongly urged the legislatures refused to 
submit. Commitment to prohibition had not been asked. The 
temperance leaders had sought merely the opportunity for the 


people to vote upon the question. In the words of John B. 
145 


146 PROHIBITION, IN THE UNITED STATES 


Finch, the head of the order of Good Templars, which had been 
very active in petition work: 

Six times in Nebraska we have gone to the Legislature on our 
knees asking the poor boon that this criminal be put on trial. 
Six times the Legislature, more than three to one Republican, has 
denied and spurned us. In Wisconsin our friends have gone five 
times with a similar petition. In Michigan they have gone four 
times, in Massachusetts twice. You in New York have gone once 
and the politicians felt the breath of your coming. They trimmed 
their platform to deceive you. They got your votes by false pre- 
tenses and then they refused your request and disgracefully broke 
their sworn pledge. 


In the beginning of 1884, John B. Finch, in a ringing mes- 
sage to the temperance people of the country on the work for 
1884, said: 


The time has come for a union of all good men and women to say 
the Government must stop the ravages and outrages of the alcoholic 
liquor trade and the prohibitionists must refuse to wait a single year 
longer without a struggle to make it win this year. The principles 
of the reform are right and agitation must arouse public attention 
and hasten the day of victory. There is no more important issue 
demanding the attention of the American people. The liquor 
lords are absolute political autocrats and dictate or try to dictate 
the nominations of both Democratic and Republican parties. For 
prohibitionists to remain idle and allow the liquor lords to fasten 
the chains of their control on this country is to betray the highest 
and holiest interests of the people. The man and woman who cries 
“Wait,” “Go slow” is an enemy of God and Humanity. 


DAE Wey C. (Tu Ose MEMORIAL 


At the national convention of the Woman’s Christian Temper- 
ance Union in 1883 it had been determined to present to the 
presidential nominating conventions a: Memorial of the American 
home for protection from the saloon, asking them to “advocate 
and adopt such measures as are requisite to the end that prohibi- 
tion of the importation, exportation, manufacture and sale of 
alcoholic beverages may become an integral part of the National 
Constitution and that your candidate shall be by character and 
public life committed to a national prohibitory constitutional 
amendment.” 

Miss Willard was commissioned to present the Memorial to 
the different conventions. At the Republican convention she was 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 147 


finally given fifteen minutes to present the Memorial to the plat- 
form committee. She went before the committee: 


On behalf of millions of women, good and true but grieved and 
sorrowiul, to ask that the guarantees and safeguards of law shall 
be stripped from the saloons of my country; that their tarnished 
gold shall no more pollute our treasury and that the land we love 
may at once and forever go out of partnership with the liquor trat- 
rire 


She was coldly received. The Platform Committee in its report 
ignored the subject and when the platform was read not a dele- 
gate even from the prohibition states uttered a peep against the 
omission. Later the Memorial which Miss Willard had pre- 
sented was found amid the litter on the floor of the committee 
room aslime with tobacco juice. This was subsequently pro- 
cured and photographed by Mr. J. A. Van Fleet, the editor of 
the Lever, a facsimile was published broadcast as evidence of 
the Republican party’s disrespectful treatment of the Memorial 
of the Christian women and as a “monument to the perfidy of 
the Republican party to the interests of the American home.” 

The attitude of the candidates was very unsatisfactory. Mr. 
Blaine, the Republican nominee for President, had advocated the 
distribution of the federal liquor tax to the states as a perma- 
nent resource to them. This proposition implied the ‘permanent 
entrenchment of liquor in the revenue system. 

Senator John A. Logan, the Republican Vice-Presidential 
nominee, had advocated the use of liquor revenue for school pur- 
poses, a policy exceedingly distasteful to persons of moral dis- 
cernment. 

Subsequently during the campaign Mr. Blaine further offended 
the prohibition element by dodging the vote on state constitutional 
prohibition when that was voted on in his state of Maine in 
September. 


ST. JOHN’S ACCESSION 


The action of the Republican convention in ignoring the pe- 
titions of the W. C. T. U. and the other temperance organiza- 
tions, in renewing its allegiance to the infamous Raster resolu- 
tion of 1872, and in nominating candidates who had publicly 
committed themselves to the perpetuation of the liquor en- 
trenchment in the revenue system resulted in driving ex-Governor 
St. John into the Prohibition party. Upon learning of the action 
of the Republican national convention, he declared: ‘I will con- 


148 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


demn such cowardice, such disregard of the best interests of the 
people with my voice and vote,’ and allied himself with the 
Prohibition party in the national contest. 

However ex-Governor St. John was not yet ready to forsake 
the Republican party in the state of Kansas. Under his leader- 
ship as Governor it had enacted the laws for carrying the con- 
stitutional amendment into effect and at the preceding election 
in 1882 it had supported prohibition in its platform. He assumed 
that it could be depended upon to uphold prohibition as against 
attempts to repeal or nullify it. However, at the state convention 
a few weeks aiter its national convention, the Republican party 
of Kansas in its platform declared merely that prohibition had 
been adopted by the people without distinction of party and 
simply pledged itself to formal compliance with the requirements 
of the state constitution. A party could hardly dare to do less 
than to pledge allegiance to the constitution. 

Although recounting the achievements of the party it did not 
include prohibition as one of them. It thus substantially dis- 
owned responsibility for prohibition and left it without party 
support—the support of the agency which was to administer 
the government of the state. Besides, the candidate nominated 
for Governor was regarded as hostile. 

St. John, instead of compromising and weakly assuming that 
the two-faced policy of the old party must be endured for the 
sake of the maintenance of the semblance of prohibition, re- 
fused to be a party to such duplicity, expressed his contempt for 
the cowardice exhibited in the Republican party’s action and, 
notwithstanding it was not without severe personal struggle that 
he severed the political associations with a party which he had 
so long served, committed himself unreservedly to the Prohibi- 
tion party in both state and nation. 


ORGANIZATION OF THE PARTY IN INDIANA 


The national convention of the Prohibition party was pre- 
ceded by the organization of the party in several states where it 
had never been organized before, notably in Oregon, where the 
initial steps toward organization were taken at the meeting of 
the State Temperance Alliance in February, in Missouri and 
in Indiana. The developments in the latter state leading to the 
formation of the party are of significance. 

Indiana was one of the last of the northern states to organize, 
there having been no ticket there prior to 1884. There had been 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 149 


a strong temperance sentiment, active temperance societies and 
there had been a state temperance organ published since 1875. 
The unsatisfactory provision which had existed for expressing 
one’s prohibition convictions at the ballot-box was illustrated 
by the weak and insipid advice given by the state temperance 
organ in the campaign of 1880. It said: “Let us look around 
us now, bury our prejudice and vote for what we think best 
for 1880.” 

For five years prior to 1884 earnest and persistent efforts 
had been made by the Grand Prohibition Council, the State 
Temperance Union, the W. C. T. U. and the churches to add 
a prohibition amendment to the constitution of Indiana. 

In 1881, after having been petitioned by 46,000 citizens, the 
Legislature passed the joint resolution for submission and re- 
ferred it to the succeeding Legislature to be again acted upon. 
But the resolution failed to be entered upon the journal except 
by its title. This clerical omission was made the pretext by the 
Senate in the Legislature of 1883 for refusing to submit the 
amendment to a vote of the people. The defeat of the amend- 
ment in Oregon and its invalidation in Iowa by similar omissions 
made by politically appointed legislative clerks caused more than 
a suspicion of something other than innocence. 

At the state conventions of 1882 both the Democratic and 
Republican parties had resolved in favor of submission, the 
former recommending submission at a general election and the 
latter at a special election, but at the same time the Democrats 
declared their hostility to the object. The Republicans did not 
commit themselves but when in the canvass it was charged by 
the wets that this silence meant an endorsement of prohibition 
the candidates vehemently denied any such construction and some 
of them openly declared their intention to vote against prohibition 
should it come to a popular vote. 

Notwithstanding this, the temperance forces made a thorough 
and expensive canvass of the state in favor of the Republican 
ticket and as a reward for it received the taunt that they had 
defeated the ticket by driving the saloon men to the Democratic 
party. The Republican party was unwilling to champion pro- 
hibition unequivocally, to such a degree as would elicit the sup- 
port of temperance Democrats. On the other hand, the liquor 
forces threw their balance of power to the Democrats with the 
result that the Democrats secured control of both houses of 
the Legislature. Submission passed the House by a large ma- 
jority. In the Senate it was defeated with eleven Republicans 


150 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


not voting. If these had voted, or if the Republicans who did 
vote had voted for submission there would have been enough 
votes combined with temperance Democrats in the Senate to have 
submitted the amendment. 

At the annual meeting of the Grand Prohibition Council held 
a few months later in September, 1883, the Council being com- 
posed of representatives of all the temperance and prohibition 
organizations of the state, it was resolved: 


If, in the coming political contest at the state election of 1884, 
neither of the great political parties declares itself in favor of a 
prohibitory amendment to the Constitution in its platform, then, 
without regard to parties, or affiliation, we will respond to a call 
for a convention of temperance voters and workers in the state 
and at such convention will organize a prohibition party and will 
place in nomination a separate ticket for state officers. 


On the following day the State Christian Temperance Union 
met in semi-annual session and endorsed the resolution of the 
Grand Prohibition Council. In March, 1884, the same purpose 
was reiterated with instructions that in case neither of the larger 
parties should endorse prohibition a convention should be called. 

In addition to the well-considered action of the organized 
societies, thousands of voters authorized the editor of the Mom- 
tor-Journal, the state temperance organ, to append their names 
to a call for a convention provided neither of the larger parties 
should endorse prohibition in its platform and nominate candi- 
dates in harmony therewith. 

At the convention of the Republican party the temperance 
people were treated with scorn and contempt and the prohibition 
resolution was refused even a hearing. 

So strong was the feeling that by the time the prohibition 
convention met in July, 1884, thirty-four thousand eight hun- 
dred and eighty signatures had been appended to the call. 

The convention was called by M. E. Shiel, the editor of the 
Monitor-Journal, It was the largest temperance convention that 
had ever been held in Indiana. Col. Eli F. Ritter was Chairman. 
A strong platform was adopted and a full ticket nominated, 
headed by Robert S. Dwiggins as candidate for Governor. He 
had served as a Republican presidential elector and also as a 
member of the state Senate. 

What the aroused Prohibitionists of Indiana thought of the 
old parties is evidenced by the following vigorous extract from 
their state platform of 1884: 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 151 


When political parties exist for the benefit of the country and 
labor for the promotion of some great good or for the eradication 
of some pernicious evil, they are a priceless blessing; but when 
they exist solely for their own good and seek to make the country 
tributary to that end, when their acts are dictated by a selfish policy 
and not by principle, and their chief aim is to secure the public 
offices and to dispense their patronage as the reward of party serv- 
ices; then political parties become subversive of public morals and 
dangerous to the stability and perpetuity of free government. To 
this complexion have the dominant parties of this country arrived. 


The platform went on to declare that the parties controlling 
the government refuse to recognize the liquor evil, spurn from 
their councils those who would call their attention to it and 
treat with contempt their earnest appeals. 

Referring to personal liberty it said: 


3. In thus prohibiting the liquor production and sale there is 
no encroachment on that personal liberty which is so dear to every - 
American ; for no man has a natural right to injure society or burden 
the community by the practice of a vice or the commission of a 
crime. . . . But drunkenness is a degrading and expensive vice and 
to make a drunkard is a crime of the first magnitude and both of 
these are legitimate outgrowths of the liquor traffic. 


Another plank was as follows: 

4. So long as legislatures are made and courts created by the 
machinery of political parties, unorganized public opinion upon any 
political question is of but little value. Even prohibition in the 
Constitution will avail but little without an efficient party honestly 
and earnestly committed to its enforcement. 


THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF 1884 


The national convention was held in Pittsburgh, July 23 and 
24. It had been originally planned to hold it in May but it was 
decided to postpone it until after the conventions of the larger 
parties in order to give them one more opportunity to indorse 
prohibition. | 

Those who had held to the hope that one of the major parties 
would champion prohibition were doomed to disappointment, 
and by the time the Prohibition convention met most of the 
aggressive prohibition workers of the country were substantially 
a unit as to the necessity of third party action. 

More than seven hundred delegates and alternates from 
thirty-one states and territories gathered in historic Lafayette 


152 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Hall. From the beginning the convention was marked by tre- 
mendous moral earnestness and great enthusiasm. 

A pre-convention rousing mass meeting was held the night 
before and here as in the conventions of 1869 and 1882 the 
dominating message was delivered by John Russell, recognized 
as one of the ablest thinkers in the history of the prohibition 
movement. His whole address deserves preservation but part 
of it has such a pertinent bearing on the present situation as to 
command insertion. One of the subjects he discussed was: 
“Why insist upon a separate political party.” 

He said that parties are exponents and representative of 
political ideas. The major parties being composed of diametri- 
cally opposite elements on this question and each containing a 
large number of voters who are antagonistic to prohibition and 
who persistently make the upholding of the liquor trade the sine 
qua non of their political support—these parties are organically 
disqualified to meet the prohibition issue. 

Reviewing the history of the prohibition movement from 1851 
to 1884, he asserted that the movement in the hands of those 
parties, or more properly in the hands of the friends of the 
principle but without a party, was “uneven, inconclusive and 
thoroughly unsatisfactory.” 

Continuing his discussion of the need of a party Dr. Russell 
said: 


Furthermore, prohibitionists need a party of their own because 
“Constitutional Prohibition,’ though it were secured in every state 
in the Union, would not prove a final adjustment of the controversy, 
nor would it remove the question from the arena of party politics. 

IT am not unmindful of the fact that some of our good friends have 
thought and taught differently on this point. Perhaps nothing 
short of actual experience will fully convince some of them of their 
error. Nevertheless, a few points should be considered touching 
this phase of the question: 

There probably is now no constitutional impediment in the way 
of enacting a prohibitory statute in any state in the Union. More- 
over, there are but few states, if any, where, if the question were 
submitted fairly, and so as not to complicate it with old party 
politics, and a “fair count” of the ballots could be obtained, a 
majority of the people would not vote for prohibition. Why, then, 
are not such statutes enacted, and why do so many good people 
petition legislative bodies in vain for the submission of constitutional 
amendments to a popular vote? The plain answer is, because the 
party in power could and would be held responsible by the liquor 
men for granting such favors to the cause of temperance. 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 153 


Furthermore, it should be observed that the enforcement of law 
against the liquor business is even more taxing to the machinery of 
a party than the enactment of it. Our points then are: Democrats 
and Republicans are growing less and less willing to submit pro- 
hibitory constitutional amendments; such constitutional provisions if 
adopted are powerless for good unless followed by suitable statutes 
for giving them effectiveness; and, finally, because the agency of a 
thoroughly united party is even more needful for the election of effi- 
cient executive and judicial officers than the legislative department. 

In this connection allow me to remark that in no other way shall 
we ever completely answer the frivolous yet popular objection of 
our opponents that “Prohibition does not prohibit.” It would in- 
deed be marvelous if it should, and it is scarcely less marvelous 
that its friends have been stupid enough to expect it to, under the 
political conditions surrounding such legislation in the past. The 
comparatively excellent record which it has made, in this regard, 
in the initiative stages of its history is owing to the soundness of the 
legal principle and the profound moral conviction upon which it 
rests. Reasoning a priori, why should we expect it to prove ef- 
fective? <A radical law in the hands of a conservative party! A 
statute to be executed which is acceptable to one-half of the party 
in power, and bitterly opposed by the other half. 

There is much reason to fear that some have striven too hard to 
make it appear that prohibitory laws are well enforced. 

No doubt such statutes have done much good, and have been 
vastly more effectual in diminishing the sale and consumption of 
liquors than any form of mere regulation can possibly prove. But 
why higgle over this point with our opponents? The true answer 
for us to make is plain: If prohibition does not prohibit then the 
people, and particularly the party in power, are to blame for it. 
It is our business to make it prohibit; and the Prohibition party 
is the only truly philosophic remedy for the evil. Government by 
the people involves government through party, the party in power 
represents the majority. 

Such laws do not enforce themselves. Neither are they enforced 
through mere public sentiment, however valuable that may be in its 
place. The truth in the case is, that owing to the malformation 
of parties on this subject, the laws heretofore enacted, embody- 
ing the prohibitory principle, have been mostly framed to meet 
political exigencies, and have hence been exceedingly deficient in 
provisions for their own enforcement. Executive officers for the 
same reason have found themselves so insecure in their official posi- 
tions as to render a vast majority of them inefficient and unreliable 
in the performance of duty. Such officials are usually dependent 
upon the united vote of their party for election and reelection. 
Liquor dealers and their sympathizers will not adhere to a party 


154 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


which will continue to promote prohibitionists to office. This view 
of the case alone is quite sufficient to account for the alleged non- 
enforcement of prohibitory laws when they exist. . 

A party whose members are radically divided on any question 
can never adopt a positive and acceptable policy on that question. 
But members of all other parties except our own are radically di- 
vided on the method of dealing with the liquor question. There- 
fore, neither of such parties can adopt a policy which will lead to 
a satisfactory adjustment of this great question. 


CONVENTION PROCEEDINGS, 1884 


The convention was called to order by Gideon T. Stewart, the 
Chairman of the National Committee. After prayer by Dr. 
A. A. Miner, of Boston,*an eloquent address of welcome was 
given by Mr. C. L. Rose, of Pittsburgh. It was responded to 
in a masterly address by Gideon T. Stewart. 

Hon. William Daniel, of Maryland, was made Temporary 
Chairman, and Charles S$. Carter, of the District of Columbia, 
and Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge, President of the W. C. T. U. of 
Ohio, were elected as Secretaries. 

Chairman Daniel made such an effective keynote speech that 
it won for him the nomination for Vice-President. Such enthus- 
iasm did he arouse that the report shows that he was interrupted 
by applause and demonstrations of approval more than seventy 
times. 

The W. C. T. U. Memorial which had been presented to the 
other conventions and had been rejected was presented by Miss 
Willard and was received with tremendous enthusiasm. 

For Permanent Chairman Prof. Samuel Dickie of Michigan 
was elected. The five general officers of the W. C. T. U. were 
included in the list of Vice-Chairmen. 

Chairman Dickie spoke briefly, stating the object of the party 
was to build up from its foundation an intelligent body of voters 
whose political thought would be the complete suppression of the 
liquor trafhe. To that work they were pledged and by that 
work they expected to stand. With the power of the general 
government in their hands it would be wielded wisely and well 
and the nation would be redeemed from the curse of the rum 
power. 

This was the beginning of Professor Dickie’s long and dis- 
tinguished career as a national leader of the party, and the dele- 
gates were universally impressed by his capacity and ability as a 
presiding officer. 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 155 


If there was great enthusiasm the first day, it knew no bounds 
the second day when nominations were made. Ex-Governor St. 
John of Kansas was put in nomination by George C. Christian 
of Illinois. The first of several seconding speeches was made 
by Miss Willard in an address of marvelous power. Said The 
Lever in its report of the convention referring to her address: 


It was easy to perceive how thoroughly the people appreciated 
her and her work. The hall was so still and quiet that no sound 
but her voice was distinguishable. Men stood gazing at her as if 
fascinated. Old men sat crying like children. Her deep earnest- 
ness struck a sympathetic chord in every heart. No artifice of 
word or manner marred her perfect delivery and when she sat 
down apparently every one in the hall arose at one time and 
hundreds of throats made the air quiver with such loud and pro- 
longed applause that it seemed as if it would never cease. 


Other seconding speeches were made by Mrs. Clara A. Hoff- . 
man, of Missouri, Dr. A. A. Miner, of Massachusetts, Michael J. 
Fanning, of Michigan, A. A. Hopkins, of New York, and Eugene 
W. Chafin, of Wisconsin, destined himself to be twice a candi- 
date for President. Mr. Chafin was credited with having the 
strongest voice in the convention. Of this group of St. John 
nominators Michael J. Fanning is the only one living as this is 
written. He says that Mr. Finch told him to make a speech 
and get up a hurrah and that on account of the applause it took 
him twenty-seven minutes to deliver a speech which normally 
would require only seven minutes. 

Others who were placed in nomination were Dr. R. H. Mc- 
Donald, of California, Gideon T. Stewart, of Ohio, James Black, 
of Pennsylvania, andy Generale Clinton Bor Fiskyiot New, jersey, 
but these names were all withdrawn and, on motion of John B. 
Finch, John P. St. John was nominated unanimously amidst tre- 
mendous enthusiasm. 

For Vice-President, William Daniel, of Maryland, George P. 
Rodgers, of Connecticut, and Clinton B. Fisk, of New Jersey, 
were placed in nomination. The two latter names were with- 
drawn and William Daniel was nominated unanimously. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. John P. St. John at this time was the most 
outstanding personality among the prohibition leaders of the 
nation. Born at Brookville, Franklin County, Indiana, February 
25, 1833, with meager opportunity for an education, he typified 


156 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the ambitious American spirit in the midst of pioneer and un- 
toward surroundings. With an innate thirst for knowledge he 
made the most of his limited opportunity and made himself 
familiar with history and biography. 

Before he was twenty he caught the “gold fever’ and started 
for California. He drove an ox team across the plains but when 
west of the Rockies was compelled to abandon it and went the 
rest of the way on foot, sighting the Golden Gate with twenty- 
five cents in his pocket. Undaunted he turned his hand at what- 
ever he could find to do, chopping wood, working in mines and 
other labor. While on the Pacific Coast he made voyages to 
Central and South America and the Sandwich Islands. He also 
engaged in Indian wars. He encountered many dangers and was 
twice wounded. 

In the meantime he had determined to become a lawyer and 
commenced the study of law in a miner’s cabin. In 1860 he 
returned to Illinois and continued his study of law and by the 
close of the year became a member of a law firm at Charleston, 
Illinois. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted and rose 
to be a Lieutenant-Colonel, returning to the practice of law 
after the War. In 1869 he removed to Olathe, Kansas, and in 
1872 was elected a member of the State Senate. 

From young manhood he had been strongly opposed to the 
liquor traffic. In 1876 at the State Republican Convention he 
was the leading candidate for the nomination for Governor. 
Several ballots had been taken and he had steadily gained and 
was leading all others when a politician who feared his tem- 
perance sentiments said to him if he would keep silent on that 
question they would nominate him. It was then that he made 
the memorable remark: “I would rather be the poorest man on 
the most barren sand hill of western Kansas with my manhood 
than to surrender it and be the Governor of the proudest state.” 

He immediately withdrew his name from the convention re- 
fusing to remain in a contest when victory was to be secured 
by silencing conscience and surrendering conviction. 

In 1878 he was nominated and elected Governor and in that 
administration the constitutional amendment was submitted to 
be voted on at the election of 1880. He stumped the entire 
state in its behalf. It was adopted and he was reelected by a 
majority of 31,468. He helped secure the legislation to enforce 
the constitution and used his executive authority to enforce it. 

By 1882 prohibition was becoming a marked success in 
Kansas. The Governor had proclaimed its benefits to other 


, 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 157 


states and sentiment was spreading rapidly. Although not seek- 
ing a third term he was renominated and the platform contained 
an unqualified endorsement of prohibition. The liquor element, 
goaded to desperation by the successful enforcement of prohibi- 
tion, made a tremendous struggle for existence and, aided by a 
large corruption fund and the treachery of some Republican 
politicians, made an alliance with the Democrats resulting in St. 
John’s defeat and the election of a pro-liquor Democrat. 

Thereafter he became a national champion of prohibition and 
visited many states speaking with ever increasing power in favor 
of prohibition as the political as well as the social and economic 
question of the age. © 

In the words of Mrs. Hoffman’s seconding speech, he became 
“the Lion-hearted, leading the crusade of the nineteenth century, 
not to the rescue of the empty sepulchre of our risen and ascended 
Lord from Moslem hands, but to rescue and reclaim the temple of 
the soul where should ever dwell the spirit of the Crucified.” 

For Vice-President. William Daniel, the nominee for Vice- 
President, was born in Maryland in 1826, He was graduated 
from Dickinson College in 1848 and admitted to the practice of 
law in 1851. In 1853 he was elected to the House of Delegates 
in the Maryland Legislature, serving two terms and in 1857 he 
was elected to the State Senate. In 1864 he was a member of 
the State Constitutional Convention. In 1872 he became the first 
president of the Maryland State Temperance Alliance and had 
been reelected every year up to 1884. As the result of the work 
of this organization, thirteen out of the twenty-three counties 
of the state had obtained local no-license. Local option in Mary- 
land differed from that in most states in that after local no- 
license had been secured it remained the settled policy and there 
could be no second vote except by a special act of the Legislature. 

Mr. Daniel had drafted many of the laws, defended them in 
the courts and prosecuted the violators. He had long been a 
prominent member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

The platform was exceptionally able. James Black was 
Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions and associated with 
him were such giant personalities as Miss Willard, John Russell, 
Dr. Miner, Judge Groo, N. F. Woodbury, John Lloyd Thomas 
and others. Seldom has a party platform contained a more sub- 
lime acknowledgment of the source of government power than 
in the first paragraph. 


158 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


THE PLATFORM OF 1884 


1. The Prohibition party, in National Convention assembled, 
acknowledges Almighty God as the rightful sovereign of all men, 
from whom the just powers of government are derived and to whose 
laws human enactments should conform as an absolute condition 
of peace, prosperity and happiness. 

2. That the importation, manufacture, supply and sale of al- 
coholic beverages, created and maintained by the laws of the Na- 
tional and State Governments during the entire history of such laws, 
are everywhere shown to be the promoting cause of intemperance 
with resulting crime and pauperism, making large demands upon 
public and private charity; imposing large and unjust taxation for 
the support of penal and sheltering institutions, upon thrift, industry, 
manufactures and commerce; endangering the public peace; dese- 
crating the Sabbath; corrupting our politics, legislation and adminis- 
tration of the laws; shortening lives, impairing health and diminish- 
ing productive industry; causing education to be neglected and de- 
spised; nullifying the teachings of the Bible, the church and the 
school, the standards and guides of our fathers and their children 
in the founding and growth of our widely extended country; and 
which, imperiling the perpetuity of our civil and religious liberties, 
are baleful fruits by which we know that these laws are contrary 
to God’s laws and contravene our happiness. We therefore call 
upon our fellow citizens to aid in the repeal of these laws and in 
the legal suppression of this baneful liquor traffic. 

During the twenty-four years in which the Republican party 
has controlled the general Government and many of the States, no 
effort has been made to change this policy. Territories have been 
created, governments for them established, states admitted to the 
Union, and in no instance in either case has this traffic been for- 
bidden or the people been permitted to prohibit it. That there are 
now over 200,000 distilleries, breweries, wholesale and retail dealers 
in their products, holding certificates and claiming the authority 
of Government for the continuation of the business so destructive 
to the moral and material welfare of the people, together with the 
fact that they have turned a deaf ear to remonstrances and petitions 
for the correction of this abuse of civil government, is conclusive 
that the Republican party is insensible to or impotent for the re- 
dress of these wrongs, and should no longer be entrusted with 
the powers and responsibilities of government. Although this party 
in its late National Convention was silent on the liquor question, not 
so its candidates, Messrs. Blaine and Logan. Within the year past 
Mr. Blaine has recommended that the revenue derived from the 
liquor traffic be distributed among the states; and Senator Logan 
has, by bill, proposed to devote these revenues to the support of the 


public schools. Thus both virtually recommend the perpetuation 


— —— —_ 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 159 


of the traffic, and that the states and their citizens become partners 
in the liquor crime. 

4. That the Democratic party has in its national deliverances of 
party policy arrayed itself on the side of the drink-makers and sell- 
ers by declaring against the policy of prohibition under the false 
name of “sumptuary laws”; that when in power in many of the 
states it has refused remedial legislation, and that in Congress it 
has obstructed the creation of a Commission of Inquiry into the 
effects of this traffic, proving that it shouid not be entrusted with 
power and place. 

5. That there can be no greater peril to the nation than the exist- 
ing competition of the Republican and Democratic parties for the 
liquor vote. Experience shows that any party not openly opposed 
to the traffic will engage in this competition, will court the favor 
of the criminal classes, will barter the public morals, the purity of the 
ballot and every trust and object of good government for party 
success. Patriots and good citizens should, therefore, immediately 
withdraw from all connection with these parties. 

6. That we favor reforms in the abolition of all sinecures with 
useless offices and officers, and in elections by the people instead 
of appointments by the President; that as competency, honesty and 
sobriety are essential qualifications for office, we oppose removals 
except when absolutely necessary to secure effectiveness in vital is- 
sues; that the collection of revenues from alcoholic liquors and 
tobacco should be abolished, since the vices of men are not proper 
subjects of taxation; that revenue from customs duties should be 
levied for the support of the Government economically administered, 
and in such manner as will foster American industries and labor; 
that the public lands should be held for homes for the people, and 
not bestowed as gifts to corporations, or sold in large tracts for 
speculation upon the needs of actual settlers; that grateful care 
and.support should be given to our soldiers disabled in the service of 
their country, and to their dependent widows and orphans; that we 
repudiate as un-American and coritrary to and subversive of the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence, that any person or 
people should be excluded from residence or citizenship who may 
desire the benefits which our institutions confer upon the oppressed 
of all nations; that while these are important reforms, and are 
demanded for purity of administration and the welfare of the peo- 
ple, their importance sinks into insignificance when compared with 
the drink traffic, which now annually wastes $800,000,000 of the 
wealth created by toil and thrift, dragging down thousands of fam- 
ilies from comfort to poverty, filling jails, penitentiaries, insane 
asylums, hospitals and institutions for dependency, impairing the 
health and destroying the lives of thousands, lowering intellectual 
vigor and dulling the cunning hand of the artisan, causing bank- 
ruptcy, insolvency and loss in trade, and by its corrupting power 


160 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


endangering the perpetuity of free institutions; that Congress should 
exercise its undoubted power by prohibiting the manufacture and 
sale of intoxicating beverages in the District of Columbia, the Ter- 
ritories of the United States and all places over which the Gov- 
ernment has exclusive jurisdiction; that hereafter no state should 
be admitted to the Union until its constitution shall expressly and 
forever prohibit polygamy and the manufacture and sale of intoxicat- 
ing beverages, and that Congress shall submit to the states an 
Amendment to the Constitution forever prohibiting the importation, 
exportation, manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks. 

7. We earnestly call the attention of the mechanic, the miner and 
manufacturer to the investigation of the baneful effects upon labor 
and industry of the needless liquor business. It will be found the 
robber who lessens wages and profits, foments discontent and 
strikes, and the destroyer of family welfare. Labor and all legitimate 
industries demand deliverance from the taxation and loss which this 
traffic imposes; and no tariff or other legislation can so healthily 
stimulate production, or increase the demand for capital and labor, 
or insure so much of comfort and content to the laborer, mechanic 
and capitalist as would the suppression of this traffic. 

8. That the activity and cooperation of the women of America 
for the promotion of temperance has in all the history of the past 
been a strength and encouragement which we gratefully acknowledge 
and record. In the later and present phase of the movement for the 
prohibition of the traffic, the purity of purpose and method, the 
earnest zeal, intelligence and devotion of the mothers and daughters 
of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union have been eminently 
blessed of God. Kansas and lowa have been given them as “sheaves” 
of rejoicing and the education and arousing of the public mind, and 
the now prevailing demand for the Constitutional Amendment, are 
largely the fruit of their prayers and labors. Sharing in the efforts 
that shall bring the question of the abolition of this traffic to. the 
polls, they’ shall j join in the grand “Praise God, from whom all bless- 
ings flow,” when by law victory shall be achieved. 

QO. That, believing in the civil and the political equality of the 
sexes, and that the ballot in the hands of woman is her right for 
her protection and would prove a powerful ally for the abolition 
of the liquor traffic, the execution of the law, the promotion of 
reform in civil affairs, and the removal of corruption in public life, 
we enunciate the principle and relegate the practical outworking of 
this reform to the discretion of the Prohibition party in the several 
States according to the condition of public sentiment in those States. 

10, That we gratefully acknowledge the presence of the Divine 
Spirit guiding the counsels and granting the success which has been 
vouchsafed in the progress of the temperance reform; and we 
earnestly ask the voters of these United States to make the principles 
of the above declaration dominant in the Government of the Nation. 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 161 


THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE 


John B. Finch, who was also the head of the great Order of 
Good Templars, was made Chairman of the National Com- 
mittee. Dr. A. J. Jutkins was chosen Corresponding Secretary. 
J. A. Van Fleet, editor of The Lever, Recording Secretary, and 
Samuel D. Hastings, Treasurer. The women were given special 
representation by the selection of Miss Frances E. Willard and 
Mrs. Eliza D. (Mother) Stewart, as members at large. 


THE CAMPAIGN 


When St. John was nominated he was engaged in speaking 
at a series of thirty temperance camp meetings, which were being 
held in New York State. He offered as soon as his engagements 
there were completed to give his services unreservedly to the 
campaign. It was determined to make the presidential cam- 
paign one of awakening. It was sought to make the party a 
force which should be felt. Under the astute management of 
Chairman Finch, who discerned the value of wielding the balance 
of power in the pivotal states having a large electoral vote, 
plans were made to concentrate in certain strategic centers, espe- 
cially New York State. Governor St. John addressed twenty- 
eight meetings from Chicago to Massachusetts, eleven of which 
were in New York State. Mr. Daniel campaigned in Wisconsin, 
Illinois, eight southern states and New England. In Philadel- 
phia, Baltimore, Newark, Brooklyn, New York, Rochester and 
other cities the large auditoriums were filled to overflowing and 
in some cases hundreds were turned away. 

When St. John spoke in New York City the Prohibition Club 
of Newburgh, 500 strong, attended in a body, that many having 
come from a distance of fifty-eight miles up the Hudson. At 
this meeting St. John said that the policy of national prohibition 
may be summed up in one phrase: “National sovereignty over 
the liquor traffic to suppress it instead of to legalize, protect 
and perpetuate it.” 

At the same meeting John B. Finch and John B. Gough, 
the famous temperance lecturer who had committed himself to 
the party, also spoke. Mr. Finch said: 


The battle is simply a battle of self-defense for the upholding of 
the home and for the destruction of the vicious elements and vitiating 
tendencies of our civilization. _The present attitude of firm tem- 
perance men has been precipitated by the fact that the liquor inter- 


162 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


est is absolutely in control of both the old parties, dictatorial, in- 
solent, proud in its ascendancy. That gigantic interest must be 
conquered or it will conquer the country. 


Mr. Finch cited a conversation with a prominent Republican 
leader at the Republican National Convention. The latter said: 
“Finch, you know that you folks don’t mean anything. You talk, 
pray, blubber and snivel 364 days of the year and on the 365th 
day you do just what we want you to do.” Finch answered, “My 
friend, it may have been so in the past but there is a limit to en- 
durance.” ‘‘Now,” he answered, “‘Finch, that ain’t so. We're not 
going to bait a hook to catch gudgeons with when we can take 
‘em with a scoopnet.” “I told him quite as angrily as I could: 
‘Sir, you'll find in November that the gudgeons won’t come into 
your net.” Now, my friends,” said Mr. Finch, “what I want 
to know is are you going to make me eat my words?” 

Before the campaign was over the Republican managers be- 
came very much afraid lest the fish would get away and not 
only was strong pressure brought to hold the voters in the party 
net but ‘the close of the campaign was marked by unscrupulous 
and shameless attacks upon St. John. It was published over the 
country that he had offered to sell out. It afterwards developed, 
and a few years later was corroborated in an article by William 
E. Curtis, a celebrated newspaper correspondent who investi- 
gated the affair, that some of the highest men in the management 
of the Republican campaign had entered into a conspiracy to try 
to bribe St. John. Other bitter attacks were made upon him 
but he emerged from the campaign flawless and more beloved 
by his followers than before. 


LHBSNOLGE 


The campaign of 1884 marked the founding by Funk and 
Wagnalls of The Voice, which was destined to be the vigorous 
fighting organ of the party and through many years the most 
influential and effective journalistic advocate of the reform. 

The first issue appeared September 25, 1884. The following 
was its first editorial: 


It is a voice, we trust, that will speak truths of such grave and 
instant importance as so to fix attention that its hearer will forget 
to ask who it is that speaks. Our care shall be that the voice be 
heard aboye the din of party conflict and by and by be heeded. 

We believe, as Professor Seelye of Amherst College aptly ex- 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 163 


presses it, “The proper control of the liquor traffic is by far the most 
important issue now before the American people. .. .” 

We believe, with Gladstone, that “intemperance has scourged the 
earth, more than war, pestilence and famine combined.” If so, 
then, with every weapon God has placed in the hands of man, we 
should attack it and destroy it. 

But why not be content to educate public opinion by tongue and 
press? For nearly a century the advocates of temperance have 
been content to do this and with what result? Threefold more 
liquor is consumed in the United States today per man than was 
consumed in 1840 and the amount consumed is rapidly increasing 
myeryoyear:'..’. 

Pen and tongue are not sufficient for the warfare. We believe 
that the most powerful educator of public opinion is the ballot. 
Look at an oft-quoted page of history. The Abolitionists talked and 
wrote for years but made little impression. In 1840 they changed 
the mode of attack; they appealed to the ballot and in twenty years 
they elected Lincoln and in four years more the shackles fell from 
the slave. Who, looking back from the elevation of the present, 
can believe that slavery would have died in 1864 had it not been 
that 7,000 men in 1840, in a Presidential election, amid the derision 
of a nation, were brave enough to throw away their votes by voting 
for a man who not one of them expected would carry a single 
State—7,000 men who were willing to risk the defeat of this or 
that party at the polls. Both parties were divided then as now 
on the tariff question. ‘Then abolition was greater than party. 
Then abolition was greater than all the issues before the Ameri- 
can people; today prohibition outweighs all the issues. 

Those 7,000 men who voted “in the air” by voting for Birney 
we recognize as the salt of that age, as true heroes of whom the 
age was not worthy. Yet in that age they were called by the Web- 
sters and Clays and Calhouns impracticables, visionary men, 
TOONS 8. 

We believe that there is nothing which so exalts and expands the 
soul of a nation as devotion to principle. Awake interest ina worthy 
unselfish cause and you ennoble men. The evil of the hour is politics 
destitute of great moral principles... 

We need a party, and will have it, that will dare defeat for the 
right. We need leaders, and will have them, who recognize that 
a party defeated in the right does not die; that history judges a 
party by its principles, not by its successes. 


THE CLOSE OF THE CAMPAIGN 


The campaign of 1884 was noted for the accession to the Pro- 
hibition party of some exceptionally strong men. The candidates 


164 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


for Governor in a number of the states were men of exceptionally 
high caliber. They commanded the respect of all. Notable 
among them were: Julius H. Seelye, President of Amherst Col- 
lege, candidate for Governor in Massachusetts; James B. Hobbs, 
former President of the Chicago Board of Trade, in Illinois; 
Samuel D. Hastings, who had served four terms as Treasurer of 
the State of Wisconsin, in that state; David Preston, a prominent 
banker of Detroit, in Michigan; and Dr. John A. Brooks, widely 
known preacher, in Missouri. 

The prominent temperance leaders were so unanimous in 
support of the party that when the Republicans wanted to send 
an appeal from so-called temperance leaders to St. John asking 
him to withdraw they had to frame a new and fictitious or- 
ganization called the New York State Temperance Assembly 
composed almost entirely of men outside of New York. 

The outcome of the election was that Blaine was defeated, los- 
ing the electoral vote of New York by the narrow margin of 
1,047 votes, whereas the Prohibitionists polled 24,999 in that 
state. The Republican party which had been in power for twenty- 
four years was turned out. 

Of course, with the vote so close any one of a number of 
factors might have been influential in turning that narrow margin. 
The histories mention prominently two factors which affected 
the result: one was the Prohibition vote and the other was the 
Rev. Dr. Burchard’s untimely allusion to Rum, Romanism and 
Rebellion. 

It had been throughout the campaign a part of Chairman 
Finch’s tactics to strike a crushing blow at one wing of the 
liquor army. He believed if the Republican party could be beaten 
it would show the strength of prohibition and lead to a later 
alignment of the prohibition forces against the liquor forces. 

The second day after election when the result was still un- 
certain, Finch sent the following telegram to the Chicago Daily 
News: 


THE PROHIBITION VOTE 


It aggregates 200,000 and has decided the Presidency, 
Special to the Chicago Daily News: 

New York, November 6—To the Editor Chicago Daily News: 
The total Prohibition vote of the country will aggregate 200,000. 
Four years ago it was less than 11,000 and it has decided the presi- 


THE FAMOUS ST. JOHN CAMPAIGN OF 1884 165 


dential contest in New York. Cleveland’s majority is about 2,000. 
Official returns will not materially change the figures. The Prohi- 
bition vote in New York is fully 25,000. The Prohibition vote in 
Allegheny, Monroe, and Orleans counties alone would have carried 
the state for Blaine if cast for him. The Prohibitionists have stood 
up to be counted and rebuked the insult offered the temperance men 
at the Chicago convention, and this vote has made Prohibition a 
national issue which will not go out of national politics until the 
beer-shop and drunkery have gone from America. The Republican 
party having been removed from the path to the graveyard, the 
Prohibitionists will at once organize to bury the whisky Democrats 
four years ahead. 

I am fully satisfied we had no choice between the candidates of 
the old parties, but were fighting to elect an issue, and we have 
won. The work to make the issue win in 1888 has already begun. 

Joun B. FINncH, 
Chairman National Prohibition Committee. 


LHE BURCHARD ALDLITERATION 


The other factor, the Burchard alliteration, also has an in- 
teresting history. A few days before the election the ministers of 
New York City held a reception for Mr. Blaine. Dr. Burchard 
was selected to voice the sentiments of the ministers and in the 
course of his remarks he said: “We are Republicans and don’t 
propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party 
whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.” 

This remark spread like wildfire over the country and was 
instrumental in prejudicing a large number of voters against 
Blaine. . 

At the reception John B. Finch happened to be present and 
with his acute perception he immediately sensed the political effect 
of Dr. Burchard’s words and copied them down. Daniel Man- 
ning, subsequently Secretary of the Treasury in Cleveland’s 
cabinet, happened to be standing behind him. He reached over, 
snatched the paper out of Finch’s hand, rushed to the tele- 
graph office and the conflagration was started. Finch’s connec- 
tion with the incident makes an interesting sequel to the “scoop- 
ing gudgeons” story. It was not the Prohibitionists who were 
scooped that time. 

Bibliographical Note. For references see close of Chapter XI. 


Chapter IX 
THE MIDDLE EIGHTIES 


The Campaign of 1884 made the Prohibition party a factor in 
national politics. It focused the attention of the country upon 
the prohibition issue. It compelled a widespread agitation and 
discussion of the subject which led to more legislation in the next 
four years than had been enacted in a quarter century thereto- 
fore. It encouraged the Prohibitionists and stimulated them to 
make greater efforts to overcome the liquor traffic. 

The solemn purpose to destroy that traffic and the parties 
which supported it was not weakened but rather intensified by 
the bitter persecutions and denunciations to which the Prohibi- 
tionists were subjected in many communities because of the 
defeat of Blaine. St. John was hanged or burned in effigy in 
about one hundred places. Prohibition preachers were turned 
out of their pulpits, business men were boycotted and in some 
cases the Prohibitionists were socially ostracized because of their 
principles. 

The storm of embitterment had not entirely subsided over two 
years later when the Kansas Legislature voted to change the 
name of St. John County to Logan County, the debate over the 
bill being characterized by the most malignant utterances. The 
speaker of the House who lobbied for the bill said: “I would 
to God that the name of St. John could be obliterated from Kan- 
sas history.’ Kansans of a third of a century later acclaimed 
St. John as the greatest Governor the state ever had.. The hatred 
of the Republicans for St. John and the whole Prohibition party 
was based upon something deeper than the defeat of Blaine 
although that greatly intensified it. The existing political régime 
feared that the Prohibition party was about to start a landslide 
which would squarely divide the country on the prohibition ques- 
tion and destroy the old political organizations. The campaign 
of 1884 was the first of two or three periods in the history of the 
Prohibition party when it seemed to be about to effect a mass 
movement to its standard but did not quite succeed. The op- 
position, instead of shattering, seemed to cement the Prohibition- 


THE MIDDLE EIGHTIES 167 


ists and they started in more aggressively than ever to prepare 
for the next campaign. 

The Voice established at the head of its editorial column its 
Line of Battle as follows: 


Individual liberty bounded by the public good. 

Prohibition through a political party. 

A Prohibition law to be effective must have a Prohibition party 
behind it to enforce it. 

A prohibitory enactment to be urged only when a prohibitory 
party is in the ascendancy and so can enforce it. 

We are to strive for FIRST, the ascendancy of a Prohibition 
party; SECOND, the enactment of prohibitory legislation. 

Prohibition must be kept the dominating and divisive issue in 
politics until the liquor traffic is rightly settled. 

Until the liquor traffic is gotten rid of there is room for only 
two parties, the National Whisky party and the National Prohibi- 
tion party. 

To enact and enforce State Prohibition the party must be a 
National party; all political parties must be National—a State politi- 
cal party is an absurdity. 

Prohibition by National Legislation in all places over which Con- 
gress has a Constitutional right to legislate. 

A party platform broad enough for all to stand on who believe 
in the suppression of the liquor traffic by law. 

It is the duty of the police, not of private citizens, to spy out 
violations of temperance laws, and a triumphant Prohibition party 
will see that this duty is promptly and efficiently performed. 


It will be observed that this militant program placed the 
emphasis upon the election to power of a Prohibition party in 
advance of an enactment in order that there might be a party 
to enforce it. 

It will be further observed that a major objective was to 
bring about an alignment where the supporters of prohibition 
would be united in one party and the liquor supporters driven to 
the opposite party. 

In January, 1885, a meeting of Pes National Committee and a 
national conference were held in New York City. It was ar- 
ranged to secure the services of St. John and other able speakers 
through the year. It was also decided to make special efforts to 
organize the party in the South. 

The year 1885 was an off year for elections in most states 
but the year was marked by striking increases in Ohio, New 
York and Kentucky. 

In Ohio, 1885 is famous in Prohibition annals as the year 


168 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of the Leonard campaign. Dr. A. B. Leonard, a man of great 
ability and force who later served many years as the executive 
of the Foreign Mission Board of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, made an aggressive campaign. He spoke with the fervor 
of a Hebrew prophet and increased the vote over two and one- 
half times. His running mate for Lieutenant-Governor, Prof. 
William G. Frost of Oberlin College, subsequently president of 
Berea College, also made some brilliant addresses. 

In New York, H. Clay Bascom, an able business man of Troy, 
was the candidate for Governor and made a splendid campaign. 

In Kentucky, Fontaine T. Fox, Jr., heading the Prohibition 
ticket as candidate for State Treasurer, polled 29,405 votes, 
27 per cent of the total vote. There was an unusual situation, 
however, in that the Prohibition party was the only party which 
made nominations in opposition to the Democrats. 

The work of organizing the party went forward. Great 
earnestness and devotion to the cause were manifested. A very 
large amount of voluntary and sacrificial work was performed. 
Many meetings were held, the organization of party committees 
was carried on and enthusiasm was spreading. Many strong 
men were attracted to the party. Nota few of those who came 
had held important office and had political experience in the larger 
parties but left them because of the domination of those parties 
by the liquor power. 

One of the auxiliary organizations created especially to 
promote the interests of the party was the National Prohibition 
Bureau, organized in November, 1885. It was the outgrowth 
of a movement on the part of several prominent eastern Prohibi- 
tionists, who after the St. John campaign had become interested 
in sending some of the leading speakers over the South. One 
of the great objectives was to build a national non-sectional 
party. During the winter of 1885-1886 a number of the leaders 
campaigned in the South, including Prof. A. A. Hopkins, Dr. 
C. H. Mead, Mrs. Lathrap, Miss Willard, Horace Waters, 
William Daniel, T. R. Carskadon, and others. 

In a little over two years under the auspices of the Bureau 
over 10,000 Prohibition party speeches were delivered and every 
state was reached. It also published about 40 four-page tracts 
on various phases of the Prohibition reform, written by the great 
leaders of the movement. ‘These tracts were called Prohibition 
Bombs. Some ten millions were distributed. 

The officers of the Bureau in its most active period were: 
President, General Clinton B. Fisk; Vice-Presidents, Horace 


THE MIDDLE EIGHTIES 169 


Waters, John B. Cornell and William T. Wardwell; Treasurer, 
W. Jennings Demorest; Field Manager, A. A. Hopkins; Secre- 
tary, William Mck. Gatchell, who was succeeded by John Lloyd 
Thomas. In December, 1888, its work was merged with the 
National Committee. 

In 1886 tickets were nominated in all but five states and the 
total of the state votes was 294,863, nearly double the St. John 
vote. It was such an increase as this which caused a New York 
daily newspaper to refer to the Prohibition party as the “Snow- 
ball’? party because it doubled every time it turned over. 

The Prohibition party was growing rapidly and threatening to 
upset the calculations of the politicians. In 1886 the vote was 
large enough to hold the balance of power in fourteen states and 
in 58 Congressional districts. 

Notable gains were made in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, 
New Jersey and other states. 

In Michigan the candidate for Governor was Prof. Samuel 
Dickie of Albion College who was destined to play a large part 
in the later history. Under his able and aggressive leadership 
the vote was increased to over 25,000 and this campaign of the 
party was the direct cause of the submission of a state constitu- 
tional amendment the following year. 

In the early eighties the Republican party of Michigan had 
twice adopted planks favoring submission but they had been dis- 
regarded by the succeeding Legislatures. In the same period 
there had been petitions for submission presented to the Legisla- 
ture containing the names of more than 100,000 citizens, but 
they had been ignored. 

But in 1887, after the Dickie vote, which was over seven times 
the margin by which the Republicans had carried the state in the 
preceding presidential election, the legislators required no pe- 
titioning to submit a constitutional amendment. Votes placed in 
the ballot-box were far more effective than petitions. 

In Pennsylvania the vote was more than doubled to 32,458. 
The candidate for Governor was Charles S. Wolfe, who as a 
member of the Legislature had fought the dominant political 
machine there. It was his nomination and the prospect of a 
large Prohibition vote which forced the Republican platform 
to make concessions in the form of submitting an amendment. 

In Texas E. L. Dohoney, the candidate for Governor, who had 
been a member of the State Senate, received 19,186 votes and in 
51 counties the Prohibition vote was larger than the Republican. 

Great activity for the party was manifest in many places. In 


170 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Ohio twenty-seven newspapers were supporting the party. In 
Vermont two Prohibitionists were elected to the Legislature, H. 
L. Bixby and Hosea Carpenter; and in Illinois one, James La- 
mont, of Rockford, the editor of the Monitor, the leading Pro- 
hibition paper of the state. 

In 1886 was started the Demorest medal contest system which 
provided for the awarding of a series of medals to the winners 
of declamatory contests upon the subject of prohibition. The 
selections were to be taken from books provided which contained 
recitations and selections from the best speeches which had been 
written. In the beginning half a dozen young people would 
compete for a silver medal. The winner of that would compete 
with other silver medal holders for the gold medal, the winners 
of gold medals would compete for a diamond medal and when 
six who had won diamond medals could be gotten together they 
would contest for the grand diamond medal, the highest honor 
in the series. By means of these contests many thousands of 
young people delivered some of the strongest prohibition mes- 
sages to audiences aggregating millions. The contests were large 
factors in developing sentiment. The system was devised and 
for several years the medals were furnished by W. Jennings 
Demorest of New York. Up to the time of his death in 1895 
more than 42,000 medals had been awarded and 250,000 decla- 
mations and recitations had been delivered. Since that time the 
medal contest work has been carried on up to the present by 
the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. 


THE MURDER OF HADDOCK 


In 1886 occurred the martyrdom of the Rev. George C. 
Haddock of Sioux City, [owa, which stirred the country. Iowa 
had a prohibitory law but in Sioux City, which then had a popu- 
lation of about 20,000, there were about one hundred saloons 
running in direct defiance of the law. The saloon-keepers had 
threatened to burn the churches if their traffic was interfered 
with, and no one had the courage to fight them until the Rev. 
George C. Haddock, who was pastor of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, accepted the challenge. He arraigned them from the 
pulpit, and was so aggressive and effective in arousing the people 
with reference to the enormity of the rebellion which was being 
carried on that at a meeting of the saloon-keepers’ association 
of the city plans were made for “doing up” the Rev. Mr. Had- 
dock and a lawyer associated with him in prosecuting the liquor 


THE MIDDLE EIGHTIES 171 


sellers. It was announced that $700 was available for rewarding 
the person doing the job. A few evenings later he hired a 
livery rig to go to a neighboring town to secure evidence and 
upon his return, in crossing the street after leaving the livery 
stable, he was accosted by a band of liquor ruffians, and one of 
them drew a pistol and shot the minister dead. The one to whom 
the evidence overwhelmingly pointed as the assassin was a 
notorious brewer. 

The trial some months later was a shocking example of the 
ability of the liquor traffic to defeat justice. After a trial lasting 
several weeks a verdict of acquittal was obviated only by the 
conscientiousness of one of the jurors who asserted that the other 
jurors had been bribed and that he had been approached by the 
brewer’s representatives and asked to name his price. 

Another trial some months later resulted in acquittal for 
the brewer notwithstanding that in the meantime one of the 
band of conspirators had been convicted and sent to jail. Imme- 
diately after the verdict the jurors went to a photograph gallery 
and were photographed with the brewer in the center. 

The succeeding annual convention of the United States 
Brewers’ Association shared the guilt of the murderer when it 
declared: 


With pride and gratification we record the fact that the fanaticism 
of Iowa Prohibitionists was frustrated in at least one instance, 
namely, the attempt to fasten the crime of murder upon a member 
of our trade. | 


It was understood that the brewers backed the murderer in the 
trials, and that thousands of dollars were contributed by the 
liquor interests to defend him. Great efforts were made to cor- 
rupt the jury system. It was reported that agents had been sent 
over the county ostensibly to canvass for the sale of their wares, 
but actually to interview every possible juror to learn his views 
upon the murder case. Through such methods as this a jury 
friendly to the liquor interests was procured. After the disagree- 
ment of the first jury, each week for several weeks there oc- 
curred assassinations, dynamite outrages and other deeds of vio- 
lence perpetrated by the liquor element against prohibition workers 
in different parts of the country. 

In New Jersey in 1886 was conducted the most notable cam- 
paign which had thus far been carried on by the Party in any 
state. General Clinton B. Fisk was the candidate for Governor 
and during the campaign, which lasted four months, he filled 


172 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


one hundred and twenty-five speaking engagements. Large 
mass meetings were held in every county and smaller meetings in 
nearly every hamlet in the state. Large amounts of literature 
were distributed. Notwithstanding temptations to fuse and to 
make deals with the old parties a clean straightforward respect- 
compelling campaign was conducted with the result that the 
St. John vote was more than trebled, the vote increasing from 
6,153 to 19,808. This comprised over nine per cent of all the 
votes cast in the election, and the Prohibition party now held the 
balance of power in twelve out of twenty-one counties, and in 
the state at large by over I1,000. 

The increased vote was an encouragement to the Prohibition- 
ists all over the country. It was felt that, as General Fisk ex- 
pressed it, “the foundations are now laid on which to build a 
conquering party.” This campaign made General Fisk the logical 
candidate for President in 1888. 

The growing influence of the Prohibition party was also the 
compelling factor in securing the passage of a county option law 
in New Jersey in 1888. After years of subserviency to the liquor 
element the Republican leaders saw the necessity of doing some- 
thing to conciliate the temperance vote. They were spurred 
to action by the prospect of General Fisk’s impending nomination 
for the Presidency and that he would likely draw sufficient votes 
to endanger Republican success in the presidential election. 

Year after year local option had been asked for and refused. 
Petitions in great numbers had been poured in upon the legisla- 
tors without avail. On one occasion a petition of the W. C. T. U. 
had been contemptuously torn up, chewed into spitballs by the 
legislators and tossed from one to another. 

In 1888 there had been but few petitions but the reason for 
the changed attitude on the part of the legislators is indicated by 
the comment of New York City dailies at the time. 

Said the New York Press (Republican) (February 16, 1888) : 


The situation demands that they [the Republicans of New Jer- 
sey] do something. General Fisk, a gentleman of the highest 
character, and the best balanced intelligence, is likely to be the Pro- 
hibition candidate for the Presidency. He hails from New Jersey 
and will poll a large vote in that state if nothing is done this year 
to settle the liquor question. 


The Mail and Express (Republican) appealing to Republican 
legislators in New Jersey said: 
You know as well as you know anything that the Third Party 


THE MIDDLE EIGHTIES 173 


Prohibitionists have for years been steadily drawing votes from the 
Republican party and this is going to continue until our party shows 
an earnest and decided disposition to array itself against the saloon 
power. You can stop it now if you will and not only stop this 
loss of votes but you can bring back to our ranks at once enough 
of those who have drifted away to make the State reliably and 
permanently Republican. 


The New York Times (Independent) said (February 22 
Although the Prohibition party in New Jersey would by no means 
approve the measure that yesterday passed to its third reading in 


the Assembly it is no doubt to the vitality of that party that the 
favorable progress of the bill is due. 


It is thus significant that in a state which was one of the 
wettest in the Union, with a large foreign element, with a great 
urban population, situated between the great cities of New York 
and Philadelphia, that even here the Prohibition party was instru- 
mental in compelling at least the passage of a county option law. 

Unfortunately, however, those Republicans who advised the 
passage of the law in order to bring back into their party ranks 
most of the temperance voters proved correct in their prognosti- 
cations. At the next election the legislation had proven so satis- 
factory that over half of those who had voted for Fisk for Gov- 
ernor in 1886 went back to the old parties in 1888.. The vote 
fell from 19,908 to 7,939. The votes having been regained, 
the danger of the growth of the Prohibition party having been 
removed the Legislature at its very next session repealed the 
county option law in 1889. Several counties had voted dry and 
others were preparing to vote, but now saloons again blanketed 
the State. 

Bibliographical Note. For references see close of Chapter XI. 


Chapter X 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY PARTY 


The passage of the county option law in New Jersey following 
the rise of the Prohibition party and its repeal following the 
recession in the vote leads to a consideration of the effect of the 
Prohibition party as a minority party from the standpoint of 
its effect in influencing legislation. 

After the St. John campaign of 1884 there were some who 
asserted a great mistake had been made in trying to build a third 
party. It was frequently said that the party Prohibitionists had 
set the cause back twenty years. 

Yet in no period in the whole half century following the 
close of the ante-bellum prohibition wave in 1856 was more 
progress made in temperance and prohibition legislation than 
in the four years following the St. John campaign. It was not 
that the Prohibition party achieved power in any state—it did 
not—but the large attention given to the question was due to its 
possibilities. It was its potentialities of achievement at a time 
when it was growing rapidly that made it feared. 

A potential defection of the temperance voters was what was 
feared by the old party politicians. At a time when the margin 
of plurality of one of the larger parties over the other was so 
small, the defection of even a comparatively small number seemed 
alarming. 

As in the field of economics potential competition is an effec- 
tive factor in restraining the evils of monopoly, so in the field of 
politics a potential defection of voters has its tempering effect 
in restraining politicians, 

In this period it was the fear of losing temperance votes 
which worried the politicians. The extent of the defection was 
an uncertain quantity. The politicians feared that it might be- 
come very large. Soon, however, they learned the limitations 
of this defection and when they saw it was not going beyond 
a certain number of votes they ceased to fear the temperance 
vote. When the Prohibition party vote ceased to rapidly in- 


crease, when the political managers found that the bulk of the 
174 


THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY PARTY § 175 


so-called temperance voters would stick by their old parties 
through thick and thin, these voters ceased to be worthy of 
consideration and concessions were no longer made to them. 
Besides, it was not long before the politicians learned that the 
potential defection of the liquor voters was to be feared more 
than that of the temperance voters. It was soon demonstrated 
that the liquor votes would not stick if their interests were op- 
posed. Furthermore, the liquor votes were better controlled, 
they were more bossible, they were more deliverable in masses 
than the temperance votes. So before long it was the fear of 
the defection of the liquor votes which was the outstanding factor 
in politics. 

From 1884 to 1888 the Prohibition party vote was rapidly 
rising. Its upper limits knew no bounds short of the defeat of 
both of the old parties. The reason for the party’s unusual 
influence was not because of the number who actually voted the 
ticket, but because so many came near voting it and there was a 
possibility that many might vote the Prohibition ticket unless 
concessions were made. 

The effect of the new party was seen on (a) the platform dec- 
larations in the larger parties, (b) the submission of constitu- 
tional amendments, (c) more stringent regulatory legislation, 
(d) the adoption of laws providing for scientific temperance 
instruction in the public schools, and (e) even on Congressional 
activity. 

1. Party Platforms. At no period in the whole history of 
the movement did prohibition get so much party platform rec- 
ognition in the larger parties as in the years following 1884, 
not even in the period thirty years later, 1914-1919, during which 
half of the states adopted prohibition. In the later period state 
prohibition was adopted usually by a popular vote separate and 
distinct from party support, the platforms usually not making 
any expression whatever on the subject. 

In 1886 in ten non-prohibition states the Republican party 
platforms contained planks favoring submission of the pro- 
hibition question to a popular vote. 

In addition, in every one of the five prohibitory states the 
maintenance of the law was advocated. The platform in New 
Hampshire called on the voters to prevent the restoration of the 
license policy. 

The Vermont platform declared that prohibition should remain 
the settled policy of the state and, “As the liquor saloon is as 
debasing in politics as it is baleful in social life the Republican 


176 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


party should everywhere reject all overtures for open or secret 
alliance with it.’ In the majority of prohibition states faithful 
enforcement was also advocated in the platforms. 

The ten states where the Republicans favored submission were: 
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nebraska, 
Oregon, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas. Jesides, 
in New Hampshire which had statutory prohibition of the sale 
of liquor, but not of the manufacture, the Republican platform 
favored the submission of a constitutional amendment prohibiting 
both the manufacture and the sale. 

Aside from the states which had already adopted prohibition, 
in not one single state did the platform of either of the larger 
parties favor the principle of prohibition. Their declarations 
were merely for submission,-not for adoption. Subsequent events 
demonstrated that they had no conviction in favor of prohibition. 
The party leaders were almost unanimously opposed. As will be 
shown in the next chapter, in several states the party machinery 
was used in the amendment campaigns to defeat prohibition. 
The platform declarations were merely concessions to the Pro- 
hibition voters, or rather baits to bring them back into the fold. 

Besides platform declarations favoring submission in the states 
above mentioned, there were indefinite expressions favoring the 
eradication of the evils of intemperance and the restraint of the 
trafic in the Republican platforms of Connecticut, ‘Indiana, 
Ohio and Wisconsin. 

In the Democratic platforms, in Oregon and Tennessee there 
were planks in favor of submission. In fourteen other states in 
which the subject was mentioned, most of the planks were hostile. 
In nine state platforms opposition to prohibition was based on 
the grounds of so-called sumptuary legislation or personal liberty. 

In 1888, a national campaign year, when it was desired not 
to offend any voter, more of the state Republican platforms were 
silent. Vermont was silent and in New Hampshire the plank was 
meaningless. Only three states favored submission, each of 
which had favored the same in 1886. In five states high license 
and local option were favored and there was an evident tendency 
to concentrate around those policies. 

On the Democratic side there was likewise a tendency toward 
silence and license. In the prohibition states of Maine, Vermont, 
and kansas they charged the Republicans with hypocrisy, 
duplicity and insincerity in the enforcement of the law. In 
several other states they opposed prohibition or favored high 
license or local option. 


THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY PARTY 177 


In subsequent years platform references by the major parties 
almost disappeared except occasionally when political capital 
could be made at the expense of the opposite party on account 
of some exceptionally bad situation. 

2. Submission. The effect of the growing Prohibition party 
vote on the submission of constitutional amendments was illus- 
trated in the preceding chapter in the case of Michigan as the 
result of the vote for Professor Dickie. In Texas submission 
was voted by the Legislature immediately following the large 
vote for E. L. Dohoney in 1886. In Pennsylvania the earlier 
Republican declaration for submission was disregarded until the 
large vote for Wolfe indicated that the new party was attaining 
influential proportions. 

In West Virginia and South Dakota the Prohibitionists were 
decisive factors in obtaining submission. 

Even in New York the increase in the party vote influenced 
submission. Following the vote for A. A. Hopkins of over 
25,000 in 1882 the next year the Republicans incorporated a 
submission plank in their platform. The succeeding Legisla- 
ture in 1884 defeated it in the Assembly by a vote of 63 to 61. 
It was understood in the Legislature that if more votes had been 
needed to defeat the submission resolution they could readily have 
been secured. 

After the Prohibition party vote had continued’ to rise each 
year and had gone up to 41,850 for Dr. D. W. C. Huntington 
in 1887 the next session of the Legislature in 1888 voted to 
submit an amendment. The resolution had to be referred to a 
succeeding and different Legislature for second passage, which 
would be two years later. By that time the Prohibition party 
vote in the state had receded and no amendment was ever sub- 
mitted. 

The superiority of votes over petitions was strikingly demon- 
strated in this period. In the early eighties many petitions had 
been presented to the legislatures until the legislators had be- 
come petition hardened. They had come to pay little attention to 
them. The marginal utility of petitioning had been reached. 

But when voters began to leave their accustomed parties their 
absence was felt, and in order to encourage their return the 
legislators used submission as a bait. They paid attention to 
votes after petitions had been disregarded and tremendous moral 
appeals had fallen on deaf ears. 

Submission to a vote of the people was acquiesced in by the 
politicians as a means of getting the question out of politics. It 


178 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


shifted the responsibility for deciding upon the subject from the 
partisan elected legislators to the people. In a number of cases 
submission was voted for by legislators with the expectation and 
desire that prohibition would be defeated and eliminated from 
politics. 

3. More Stringent Legislation. In the four years following 
1884 local option laws were passed in fifteen states and terri- 
tories and more stringent laws were enacted in nearly every state 
and territory. 

Every prohibition state strengthened its legislation. Abate- 
ment and injunction provisions were adopted, more effective 
methods for search and seizure were provided, and heavier pen- 
alties for violation were added. 

In seven states and two territories the local option laws enacted 
permitted county option. In six states the local option applied 
to smaller geographical areas. Between 1885 and 1887 four 
state capitals outlawed the saloon: Atlanta, Georgia; Raleigh, 
North Carolina; Charleston, West Virginia, and Jackson, Mis- 
sissippi. All’returned to license within a short time. 

Sunday closing laws were passed in several states, and high 
license laws, in which the restrictive features were conspicuously 
played up, were passed in half a dozen states. In some other 
states local option or strongly restrictive bills came within a 
narrow margin of passing. 

4. Scientific Temperance Instruction Laws. Perhaps the 
most uniformly successful, and ultimately the most far reaching, 
of any legislation enacted for twenty years following 1884 were 
the laws for teaching the effects of alcohol in the public schools. 
The work of initiating and promoting this legislation was carried 
on by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and especially 
by the department of Scientific Temperance Instruction at the 
head of which was Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, an able woman of 
remarkable personality. 

It is by no means disparaging the matchless service which she 
performed to say that the Prohibition party was a large factor 
in obtaining the passage of these laws. 

Although agitation for such laws had been carried on for 
several years, in only a few states had success been achieved by- 
the close of 1884. But after the stimulus of the St. John cam- 
paign there were twelve states which passed scientific temperance 
instruction laws at the very next session of their legislatures. 
Within four years the number of states had increased to 25 and 
by 1902 every state in the Union had joined the procession. 

The politicians were glad to make some concession to the tem- 


THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY PARTY 179 


perance people. Provision for educating the children was the 
line of least resistance and coincided with the loose ideas of the 
politician class that temperance was a matter for women and 
children. Besides, the children would not give them trouble 
politically as they could not vote for a good many years. The 
liquor men did not have the intelligence to foresee the effect 
on the future and did not fight against this class of laws as they 
did those which affected them directly and immediately. The 
result was that a foundation in education regarding the effect 
of alcohol was laid which proved to be an impregnable basis 
for prohibition in the succeeding generation. 

5. Congressional Activity. Even in Congress the influence of 
the growth of the Prohibition party was felt. It was reflected 
in the passage of a federal law providing for instruction con- 
cerning the physiological effects of alcohol and narcotics in the 
schools of the District of Columbia and the territories and in all 
other schools under federal control. The law was passed and 
signed by President Cleveland in 1886. It was the first dis- 
tinctly temperance measure enacted by Congress since the passage 
of the law prohibiting the sale of liquor to the Indians fifty-two 
years before, with the exception of prohibition for the territory 
of Alaska, which was incorporated in the laws for the government 
of that territory in 1884. 

In 1887 a proposed prohibitory constitutional amendment was 
introduced by Senator Blair of New Hampshire and favorably 
reported by the Senate Committee on Education and Labor the 
following year. In drafting the amendment Senator Blair had 
conferred with John N. Stearns, the Secretary of the National 
Temperance Society, Miss Willard, President of the W. C. T. U., 
John B. Finch, National Chairman of the Prohibition party and 
other leading Prohibitionists. The proposed amendment read: 


Article — 


Sec. 1. The manufacture, importation, exportation, transportation 
and sale of all alcoholic liquors as a beverage shall be, and hereby 
is, forever prohibited in the United States and in every place subject 
to their jurisdiction. 

Sec. 2. Congress shall enforce this Article by all needful legisla- 
tion. 


It is to be noted that this amendment included all alcoholic 
liquors. It used the word alcoholic instead of intoxicating and 
there was no possibility of the wets circumventing the amend- 
ment by misconstruction of its terms. 

The same amendment was introduced in the House. It was 


180 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


referred to the Judiciary Committee. All but one member of that 
committee agreed to an adverse report. One member, Represen- 
tative A. X. Parker of New York, brought in a favorable minority 
report presenting reasons why it should be submitted. 

It was more than a quarter of a century before a resolution 
for a prohibitory constitutional amendment was again reported 
to the floor of Congress. 

Another by-product of the growing Prohibition vote was the 
concern it was causing in Congress. At the beginning of the 
new session in December, 1887, conferences of certain Repub- 
lican Senators were held to see if it would not be expedient to 
champion some national temperance measures in Congress. At 
one of these conferences it was determined to prepare a bill 
for prohibition in the District of Columbia and Hon. H. B. 
Moulton, the leader of the Prohibition party in Washington, 
was invited to prepare a bill. A bill was introduced in the 
Senate known as the Platt bill for prohibition in the District 
of Columbia, but it was killed in committee early in 1888. 

Of the defeat of this bill Attorney Schade of the United States 
Brewers’ Association reported at the National Brewers’ Congress 
in 1888 as follows: 


Though Miss Willard and a whole battalion of female Prohibi- 
tionists made fervent appeals before the Senate’s District of Colum- 
bia Committee, the simple reminder from the friends of personal 
liberty that there was a presidential election pending sufficed to 
induce even the Republican members of the Committee (with one 
exception) to vote the bill down unanimously. No prohibition will 
pass this Congress. Indeed, I can proudly point to the fact that 
with the exception of the School-book bill (and we did not fight 
that) none of the measures of the Prohibitionists have thus far 
passed the National Legislature and in all likelihood will not here- 
after, provided no mistakes are made on our part. 


This suggests one of the reasons why the prohibition move- 
ment in the eighties failed to advance. 

6. The Warner Miller Campaign in New York. The best 
testimony to the influence of the rising party was the extreme 
measures which were taken to prevent its growth. In 1888 the 
remarkable spectacle occurred of a former United States Senator 
from the largest state in the Union deliberately entering a cam- 
paign for Governor and sacrificing himself to keep down the 
Prohibition vote in order to save the state to his party for 
the Presidency. New York was the pivotal state, an exceedingly 
close state. President Cleveland had carried it for the Demo- 


THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY PARTY 181 


cratic party four years before by a plurality of only a little 
over one thousand votes. David B. Hill, the Democratic Gov- 
ernor, was a candidate for reelection. The Prohibition party had 
grown steadily every year, the vote in 1887 having been 41,850. 
If it merely kept up the same rate of growth it had maintained 
for four years it would poll at least 47,000 votes in 1888. 

The return of the Republicans to power in the nation was con- 
ditional on carrying New York. The Republicans were willing 
to let the Democratic party retain the state administration if they 
could regain the nation. Harrison, the Republican candidate for 
President, was acceptable to the liquor interests. A deal was 
made whereby if the wet Democrats would vote for Harrison, 
the wet Republicans would vote for Hill, who as Governor had 
vetoed a high license measure earlier in the year. 

But the Republicans feared that the wet Democrats could not 
be depended upon to leave their party and vote for Harrison so, 
to be doubly sure, a determined effort had to be made to bring the 
Prohibitionists back into the Republican fold. Ex-Senator War- 
ner Miller made a vigorous canvass for Governor apparently on 
the temperance issue. While studiously avoiding prohibition 
and confining himself to the advocacy of high license he fulmi- 
nated against the evils of intemperance, attacked Governor Hill 
for his favoritism to the liquor interests and succeeded in satisfy- 
ing many of the more moderate témperance voters. 

The outcome of the election was that Harrison carried the 
state for the Republicans by 14,373 and Hill was reelected as 
Democratic Governor, defeating Miller by 19,171. The Prohibi- 
tion vote which, if it had followed the normally experienced in- 
crease, would presumably have been 47,000 fell to 30,231, the 
decrease from the presumptive vote having been greater than 
Harrison’s plurality. 

The Republicans reached both their objectives and captured 
for Harrison part of the Prohibition vote and also part of the 
wet Democratic vote. A close analysis of the vote showed that 
Harrison’s vote over Miller which was 19,045 was drawn chiefly 
from wet Democrats in 66 wards, mostly in New York, Brook- 
lyn, Buffalo and Rochester. Harrison thus owed his election to 
the Presidency to a combination of saloon Democrats and weak- 
kneed temperance voters whose return was procured by ex- 
Senator Miller’s campaign. If either side had been neglected, 
Harrison’s plurality would have been very precarious if not a 
minus quantity. 

1See Solid Shot, pp. 167-171. 


182 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Following the election ex-Senator Miller frankly confessed that 
his chief purpose had been to keep down the Prohibition vote. 
He said: 

When I accepted the nomination my chances of being elected were 
exceedingly slight. I did not expect then that I could win. My 
wife did not want me to take it. I told her, however, that I be- 
lieved it was possible to keep down the Prohibition vote and save 
the state for General Harrison. I started in with that object in 
view. It was accomplished. 


This extended review has indicated the political influence of 
the Prohibition party upon the larger parties in a period when 
its vote was rapidly growing. but when its rise was checked 
and it ceased to be a threatening competitor for votes the old 
parties needed no longer to make bids for the temperance vote 
and directed their attention to competing for the liquor vote 
which was both more deliverable and more exacting. Little more 
important prohibitory legislation was obtained for many years. 

The legislation which was obtained as the result of the increase 
in the Prohibition party vote was frequently cited as fully justify- 
ing party action and as showing that only in the continued growth 
of the party was there hope for favorable legislation from the old 
parties. An editorial in the Voice of September 19, 1889, ex- 
pressed the current judgment, of the effect of the party by those 
who were familiar with the whole field: 


A large and increasing Prohibition party vote compels the old 
parties to level up in their platforms and in their legislation: they 
place additional restrictions on the traffic, submit amendments, 
sympathize, promise—anything to put a check to the growth of the 
Prohibition party. Even the liquor men themselves, when the Pro- 
hibition party vote shows a large increase, are invariably willing to 
make concessions and are glad to let well enough alone. ... On 
the other hand, a decrease in the Prohibition party vote removes fear 
from the minds of politicians and makes the liquor men clamorous 
for a relaxation of restrictive laws. 


The Voice cited a number of illustrations. In New Jersey the 
large Prohibition vote in 1886 caused the politicians to seek to 
head off prohibition, by high license and local option laws. 
The increasing Prohibition party vote having ceased to be 
feared, the liquor men crawled from their holes, grew bold in 
their demands and the repeal of local option followed. 


In Pennsylvania the large Prohibition vote compelled the Repub- 
licans to enact a high license law and submit an amendment. These 


THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY PARTY 188 


concessions succeeded in throwing thousands of Prohibitionists off 
their guard; the party vote fell from 32,000 to 21,000. That vote 
no longer looked dangerous to the liquor men and the politicians so 
there was no hesitancy in turning the whole old party press and 


machinery over to the service of the saloon for the defeat of the 
amendment. 


Similar illustrations from several other states pointed to the 
conclusion that it was possible to get better legislation from the 
liquor forces themselves with a menacing increase in the Pro- 
hibition party vote than from the old party politicians when they 
had nothing to fear. 

The Voice made the argument that not only did the Prohibi- 
tion party provide the only way to ultimate prohibition but that 
the increasing support of the Prohibition party offered the best 
means to obtain better restrictive laws and better enforcement 
for the time being. 

Emphasis along this line, however, proved unwise as it tended 
to make some of the party voters look upon the party merely as a 
club to compel concessions from the larger parties and when 
those concessions were obtained many of them went back, content 
with small gains. 

There was necessarily a limit beyond which the old parties 
could not go. Organized as they were on other issues than 
prohibition and each having constituencies diametrically opposed, 
wet defection and party defeat were almost certain if a party 
went too far. In fact, in a number of states the wets disciplined 
by defeat the Republican party for its too great deflection tem- 
peranceward. This was the case even in Kansas and Iowa, 
where the expressed sentiment was strong for prohibition. Most 
of the concessions obtained turned out to be temporary or very 
unsubstantial. The only sure philosophy was that of prohibition 
supported by an organized united majority unalterably committed 
to that principle. 

There was a great contrast between the meager gains obtained 
and the achievement of the program of the Prohibition party. 
The Prohibition party was seeking the establishment of a gov- 
ernmental policy covering a vital question of public welfare and 
national morality radically different from, and superior to, that 
which was attainable through the other parties. It was seeking 
not merely a law but a reformation of politics and government 
thorough-going enough to effectuate its great object. It was 
seeking to build a great political party commensurate with the 
greatness of the task. 


Chapter XI 
THE LATER EIGHTIES 


In 1887 elections were held in only a few states but notable 
gains were made in New York, Ohio and Massachusetts, In 
the latter state two Prohibitionists were elected to the Legis- 
lature, Franklyn Howland and Arthur A. Brigham, the former 
to the State Senate. 

The year was marked by great activity and exceptionally large 
conventions in those states which held them. In New York the 
convention which nominated Dr. D. W. C. Huntington to head 
the ticket as candidate for Secretary of State was perhaps the 
greatest convention thus far held and one significant feature of 
it was that more than half of the delegates were young men under 
thirty-five. The vote polled that year, 41,850, was the largest 
thus far received in any state. 

The Ohio convention adopted a platform setting forth in a 
clear manner the reasons for party action as illustrated by the 
following extract: 


To compel the rum-seller to relinquish his unrighteous gains 
something more than sentiment is required. There must be decisive 
action by the Governor, the legislators and all officers of the law. 
But these officers are controlled by the political party to which they 
belong, and each of the old parties contains a large number of the 
very men whose nefarious business is to be abolished. Consequently 
the leaders, caring more for the liquor vote and the spoils of office 
than for the public welfare, prevent the enactment or enforcement 
of any law except such as the liquor men will consent to. Our so- 
called temperance laws have each some compromise feature, and 
amount to little more than a sword without a handle. Temperance 
people need not discuss what kind of a temperance law is best. The 
question before the temperance people of Ohio today is, Shall we 
have any law except such as the liquor element will consent to? 

Temperance men have been in the habit of petitioning for tem- 
perance laws and then voting for the old party just the same when 
those petitions were rejected, while liquor men refuse to support 
any party which does not meet their demands. The inconsistent 
conduct of the temperance eal has thus occasioned a long line 

4 


THE LATER EIGHTIES 185 


of defeats and disappointments. It ought to stir them to action to 
remember the fate of the Adair law, the Second Amendment, the 
Sunday law, the Memorial of the Voters’ Union, and the oft re- 
peated petitions for Local Option; the conduct of the last Legis- 
lature in protecting the saloon by defeating all prohibitory and tem- 
perance measures, and even refusing to introduce temperance in- 
struction in the public schools. Even when a temperance man is 
nominated as a Democrat or as a Republican, he will feel in honor 
bound to defend his party platform, and to do nothing which would 
hurt the party by driving off its liquor wing. It has become evident 
that the Rum power, like the Slave power, must be vanquished by 
a political organization which is thoroughly united in opposition 
to the evil to be suppressed. We, therefore, call upon the people, 
without regard to past political differences or divisions, to unite with 
a party whose aim is to commit the Government to the policy of 
hostility to the liquor traffic herein laid down. 


Upon the platform of which this is an extract Morris Sharp 
as candidate for Governor polled the largest vote the party ever 
received in Ohio. 


THE DEATH OF JOHN B. FINCH 


On October 3, 1887, occurred the death of John B. Finch, who 
since 1884 had been the National Chairman of the party and 
for a like period had also been the head of the order of Good 
Templars. He was only thirty-five years of age at the time of 
his death. He was generally regarded not only as the foremost 
prohibition orator but also as the ablest leader the cause had. 
Many of those who remember him consider that to this day the 
cause has not had his equal. 

For ten years he had been on the temperance and prohibition 
lecture platform and had taken a leading part in nearly all of 
the constitutional amendment campaigns. His personality, mag- 
netic and kindly as well as keen and incisive, attracted strong men 
even though they might be opposed to him politically. He pos- 
sessed a rare political genius combined with a lofty idealism. His 
method of presenting the prohibition issue helped greatly to popu- 
larize it. Some of the addresses which he gave in the amendment 
campaigns were assembled in a book entitled, The People versus 
the Liquor Traffic. He engaged in some notable joint debates, 
two of which are to be found in The Life of Finch, written by 
Mrs. Finch and Frank J. Sibley. | 

An intimation of his statesmanlike quality is given by a short 
extract from an address delivered in June, 1887. 


186 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


This is a Government of the people, by the people and for the 
people. The first element of its success rests on the intelligence, 
the morality, the character of the masses, and it is the duty of 
the Government to develop, foster and support institutions which 
try to build up character, strengthen morality and develop intelli- 

ence. 
‘A It is the duty of the Government by the hand of law to sup- 
press every institution which debauches character, ruins intelligence 
and wrecks morality. 

Our fine school system was developed by law because of the ne- 
cessity that the people of the United States shall be intelligent. If 
we pay taxes to support our free schools and colleges, is it not 
the height of political folly and a blunder in political statesmanship 
to license antagonistic schools of vice and crime from which the 
nation derives revenue? 

In countries governed by an emperor with a standing army the 
people submit to the emperor’s will. The emperor may use his 
army to control a drunken mob. But in a Government of the 
people, by the people and for the people in which the people con- 
trol themselves a riotous people may overthrow the popular govern- 
ment. 


Finch’s last speech was delivered at Lynn, Massachusetts, and 
it was while returning from there, after the evening meeting, that 
he fell in the railroad station at Boston, a victim of heart disease 
brought on by overwork. His last crowning message was un- 
usually significant. Among other things, he said: 


Today, if I could pass a Prohibition law in the State of Massachu- 
setts and I could not put officers in power in sympathy with it, I 
would not pass the law, because people would say that the law is 
a failure, when the failure would not be due to the law but to the 
perjured rascals who swore to enforce the law and did not. The 
naked sword of justice in the hands of a determined party is the 
only instrument that will bring the desired results. ... 

My friends, you have won the last constitutional victory you will 
win in this country until you have broken the back of the existing 
political forces of this country. I stand here tonight to say that 
so great is the organized liquor interest of this country that it is 
a political crime for an honest Christian man to be put in nomi- 
nation. 


His closing summons was: 


Boys, we can’t offer you offices; but if you want a chance to fight 
for mother, home and conscience and against the grogshop and 
monopolies, come with us and we will carry the banner of prohibi- 
tion until in the White House sits a man who believes in the prin- 
ciples of the Prohibition party. 


THE LATER EIGHTIES 187 


Professor Samuel Dickie of Michigan, who had made such a 
splendid campaign for Governor in 1886 and had led the amend- 
ment campaign in Michigan in 1887, was selected as Finch’s 
successor as National Chairman. 


THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF I888 


As the time for the Prohibition National Convention ap- 
proached, great hopefulness and enthusiasm characterized the 
Prohibitionists. The vote in the state elections two years before 
had nearly doubled and in most of the states where elections had 
been held in 1887 the trend was steadily upward. Prohibition 
was being agitated as never before. 

It is true that there had been constitutional amendment defeats 
in four states the year before, but with the exception of Michigan 
where there had been gross fraud in the count the results were 
what had been anticipated. The fact that the old party machines 
had been used against prohibition, and the current attitude of the 
politicians generally, demonstrated still more strongly the im- 
perative necessity for the Prohibition party. 

It was thought by many that the 1888 campaign would make 
prohibition the dominant issue in American politics and that by 
1892 the Prohibition party would sweep on to victory. 

Up until President Cleveland’s famous low tariff message in 
December, 1887, which caused a ferment over the country, there 
were not only Prohibitionists but there were also observers in all 
parties who thought prohibition would soon become the leading 
national issue. At the time of the national convention the extent 
of the excitement on the tariff question in the campaign was not 
fully foreseen. It was an old and almost perennial question and 
although recurring in a new form the Prohibitionists felt that 
the tariff issue in its relation to the welfare of the nation was 
small in comparison with the effect of the liquor traffic. 

The convention was held at Indianapolis on May 30 and 31. 
There were present 1,029 regularly appointed delegates from 
42 states and territories, and thousands of visitors besides. They 
were not only hopeful and enthusiastic, but they were determined 
and consecrated, with a sense of responsibility for the advance- 
ment of the cause. A delegate from New York, Mr. George B. 
Hillard, who traveled with the New York delegation in special 
cars, describing the trip to the writer, said that it was like a 
prayer meeting all the way, so thoroughly in earnest and devoted 


188 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


to the cause were the delegates. The delegates from that state 
alone numbered four hundred. 

The day preceding the opening of the convention there was 
held the first national oratorical contest of the Intercollegiate 
Prohibition Association. That association had been organized 
at a convention of college men held at Cleveland, January 3 and 
4, 1887, attended by representatives from forty-four colleges and 
universities. Its president was Dr. Herrick Johnson, President 
of McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, and its Secretary 
and organizer was Walter Thomas Mills of the University of 
Wooster, Ohio. 

This was the first of a series of eight quadrennial national con- 
ventions of the Party at which the Intercollegiate Prohibition 
Association assembled a convention of college men and at all, 
except the convention of 1892, an interstate or national inter- 
collegiate oratorical contest was held. 

The Temporary Chairman of the convention was the Rev. 
Dr. H. A. Delano, of Connecticut, and John P. St. John was 
Permanent Chairman. Samuel W. Small, of Georgia, was Secre- 
tary, with J. B. Cranfill, of Texas, Mrs. Mattie McClellan Brown, 
of Ohio, and George F. Wells, of Minnesota, assistant secretaries. 
Colonel Eli F. Ritter, of Indianapolis, made the address of wel- 
come which elicjted great enthusiasm. H. Clay Needham, of 
Kansas, presented a gavel made of wood from a telegraph pole 
in Topeka, on which St. John had been hanged in effigy. 

Of the former candidates, Black and Russell, Dow and Thomp- 
son, and St. John were present and were most heartily greeted by 
the convention. 

Assembling on Memorial Day, a great Memorial meeting was 
held at which Miss Willard and prominent party leaders who 
had worn the Blue or Gray spoke. There was manifest a patriotic 
spirit of rededication to a reunited Union. For several years 
leading representatives of the Party had been working in the 
South and one of the party objectives was to obliterate sectional- 
ism, forget past differences and unite the better elements of both 
North and South to overcome the greatest evil of the time. 

Among the mottoes liberally displayed about the hall were: 


The Prohibition Army of the Blue and the Gray is coming, five 
hundred thousand strong, to conquer Rum. 

Partisan prohibition means prohibition that will prohibit. 

National Prohibition by a party whose Supremacy depends upon 
its Enforcement will Win. 

No evil can be Exterminated by Selling it the Right to Exist. 


THE LATER EIGHTIES 189 


High license makes the liquor-seller a collector of revenue. Poor 
women and children starve and freeze that the rich may elude 
taxation. 

Local Option is too Local and too Optional. 

A half million votes for the Prohibition party in 1888 means only 
two parties in 1892, no matter by what names called, divided on 
this issue, the home versus the saloon. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. It was a foregone conclusion that General 
Clinton B, Fisk would be nominated. Never in the history of 
the Party was the nomination of a particular man so clearly 
indicated. His character, ability, public service, social standing 
and devotion to the Prohibition party, together with the remark- 
able record he made in his campaign for Governor of New Jersey 
two years before made him the logical and outstanding candidate. 

He had been a General in the Civil War. He had performed 
distinguished service for the freedmen and had founded Fisk 
University at Nashville for their education. His humanitarian 
interest also included the Indian and, since the time of his ap- 
pointment by President Grant, he had been a member of the 
Board of Indian Commissioners, in later years serving as its 
president. He was a prominent and successful business man, 
being engaged in railroad management and in banking. He 
was one of the foremost laymen in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, serving as Chairman of the Book Committee which man- 
aged the publishing enterprises of the whole denomination. He 
was unanimously nominated amid great enthusiasm. 

For Vice-President. It was the universal sentiment of the 
convention that a Southerner should be nominated. 

The names of Colonel George W. Bain, of Kentucky, Samuel 
W. Small, of Georgia, John A. Brooks, of Missouri, John T. 
Tanner, of Alabama, and E. L. Dohoney, of Texas, were placed 
in nomination. Colonel Bain declined on account of his health 
and the other names were withdrawn in favor of Dr. John A. 
Brooks, who was nominated by acclamation. 

He was born in Kentucky in 1836, After having been grad- 
uated from Bethany College he entered the ministry in the 
Christian Church. During two years of the Civil War he was 
president of a college in Kentucky and his sympathies were with 
the South, although he extended. hospitality to soldiers on both 
sides. He filled important pastorates in Kentucky and Missouri. 
In the early eighties he was chosen president of the Missouri 


190 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Prohibition Alliance. A notable agitation followed. He can- 
vassed the state, speaking in one hundred counties, and a Legis- 
lature was elected pledged to submission. This was prevented by 
the brewers of St. Louis and a high license law was enacted as 
a compromise. 

In 1884 he was Prohibition nominee for Governor of Missouri 
and polled 10,426 votes. In the succeeding four years he worked 
earnestly to promote Prohibition sentiment, making addresses in 
many states. 

Few conventions have been more harmonious than the con- 
vention of 1888, The only subject upon which there seemed to 
be any difference of opinion was upon the wisdom of incorpo- 
rating an equal suffrage plank. After thorough debate a plank 
in favor of equal suffrage was overwhelmingly adopted, more 
than 95 per cent of the delegates voting for it. 


THE PLATFORM OF I888 


The Prohibition party in National Convention assembled, acknowl- 
edging Almighty God as the source of all power in Government, 
do hereby declare: 

1. That the manufacture, importation, exportation, transporta- 
tion and sale of alcoholic beverages should be made public crimes, 
and prohibited as such. 

2. That such Prohibition must be secured through Amendments 
to our National and State Constitutions, enforced by adequate laws 
adequately supported by administrative authority; and to this end 
the organization of the Prohibition party is imperatively demanded 
in State and Nation. 

3. That any form of license, taxation or regulation of the liquor 
traffic is contrary to good government; that any party which sup- 
ports regulation, license or taxation enters into alliance with such 
traffic and becomes the actual foe of the State’s welfare, and that 
we arraign the Republican and Democratic parties for their per- 
sistent attitude in favor of the license iniquity, whereby they oppose 
the demand of the people for Prohibition, and, through open com- 
plicity with the liquor crime, defeat the enforcement of law. 

4. For the immediate abolition of the Internal Revenue system, 
whereby our National Government is deriving support from our 
greatest national vice. 

5. That an adequate public revenue being necessary, it may prop- 
erly be raised by import duties; but import duties should be so re- 
duced that no surplus shall be accumulated in the Treasury, and 
that the burdens of taxation shall be removed from foods, clothing 
and other comforts and necessaries of life, and imposed on such 


THE LATER EIGHTIES 19] 


articles of import as will give protection both to the manufacturing 
employer and producing laborer against the competition of the 
world. 

6. That the right of suffrage rests on no mere circumstance of 
race, color, sex or nationality, and that where, from any cause, it has 
been withheld from citizens who are of suitable age, and mentally 
and morally qualified for the exercise of an intelligent ballot, it 
should be restored by the people through the Legislatures of the 
several States, on such educational basis as they may deem wise. 

7. That civil service appointments for all civil offices, chiefly 
clerical in their duties, should be based upon moral, intellectual and 
physical qualifications, and not upon party service or party necessity. 

8. For the abolition of polygamy and the establishment of uni- 
form laws governing marriage and divorce. 

g. For prohibiting all combinations of capital to control and to 
increase the cost of products for popular consumption. 

10. For the preservation and defense of the Sabbath as a civil 
institution, without oppressing any who religiously observe the same 
on any other than the first day of the week. 

11. That arbitration is the Christian, wise and economical method 
of settling national differences, and the same method should, by judi- 
cious legislation, be applied to the settlement of disputes between 
large bodies of employees and their employers; that the abolition of 
the saloon would remove the burdens, moral, physical, pecuniary and 
social, which now oppress labor and rob it of its earnings, and 
would prove to be a wise and successful way of promoting labor 
reform, and we invite labor and capital to unite with us for the 
accomplishment thereof; that monopoly in land is a wrong to the 
people, and the public lands should be reserved to actual settlers: 
and that men and women should receive equal wages for equal work. 

12. That our immigration laws should be so enforced as to pre- 
vent the introduction into our country of all convicts, inmates of 
other dependent institutions, and others physically incapacitated for 
self-support, and that no person should have the ballot in any State 
who is not a citizen of the United States. 

Recognizing and declaring that Prohibition of the liquor traf- 
fic has become the dominant issue in national politics, we invite 
to full party fellowship all those who, on this one dominant issue, 
are with us agreed, in the full belief that this party can and will 
remove sectional differences, promote national unity, and insure 
the best welfare of our entire land. 

Additional Resolutions. 
Resolved, That we hold that men are born free and equal, and 
should be made secure in all their civil, legal and political rights. 
Resolved, That we condemn the Democratic and Republican parties 
for persistently denying the right of self-government to the 600,000 
people of Dakota. 


192 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The National Executive Committee was composed of the 
following: Chairman, Samuel Dickie, Albion, Michigan; Vice- 
Chairman, A. A. Stevens, Tyrone, Pennsylvania; Secretary, J. B. 
Hobbs, Chicago, Illinois; Treasurer, Samuel D. Hastings, Madi- 
son, Wisconsin. 

Other members: Samuel W. Small, Atlanta, Georgia; A. G. 
Wolfenbarger, Lincoln, Nebraska; William T. Wardwell, New 
York City. 

At the meeting of the Committee it was voted that the active 
campaign be carried on chiefly in those states and Congressional 
districts where the Prohibition party was likely to hold the balance 
of power. A half million copies of the platform were printed and 
distributed. 

The greatest notification meeting in the history of the Party 
was held June 22, in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York 
City, which was one of the five largest audience rooms in the 
world. It was filled to overflowing, hundreds being unable to 
obtain seats. The meeting was presided over by William T. 
Wardwell. It was a report of the tremendous success of this 
meeting telegraphed to Chicago, where the National Republican 
Convention was still in session, which stimulated the Republicans, 
just before the adjournment of their convention, to adopt the 
famous Boutelle resolution as an annex to their platform. It 
said: 

The Republican party cordially sympathizes with all wise and 
well-directed efforts for the promotion of temperance and morality. 


General Fisk issued his letter of acceptance in July. The 
following is an extract: 


Within a few years the temperance reform has altogether changed 
front. In the great conflict which has been and yet is waging, tem- 
perance forces no longer face human appetite and habit alone; they 
oppose legislation, law, the purpose of political parties, the policy 
of State and Nation. What law creates, law alone can kill. The 
creature of law, the saloon—the liquor traffic—can die only at law’s 
hand or the hand of law’s executor.... 

It is not enough that we reform the individual; we must reform 
the State. The policy of great commonwealths, of a whole people, 
must be remade and put in harmony with sound economic prin- 
ciples, the true cooperation of industrial effort, the essential condi-— 
tions of national prosperity, and the genuine brotherhood of man. 

So broad a demand as this can be met in but one way. 

It has been well said: “A political reform can become a fact in 
government only through a political party that administers gov- 


THE LATER EIGHTIES 1938 


ernment.” A reform so vast as this we advocate, involving such 
radical changes in State and National policy, is utterly dependent, 
for its agitation and consummation, upon some party agent or force. 
To give it success, to make it indeed and indisputably a fact, that 
party force or agent must be in full accord with the reform, and must 
have in itself the power of successful achievement apart from those 
elements and influences alien to the reform. No party which is 
made public administrator by the enemies of temperance, or which 
owes the election of its candidates to saloon influences, can ever 
establish Prohibition as a binding fact in government anywhere. 


It had been originally planned for General Fisk to make a 
widespread speaking campaign to cover a large part of the 
country. After a few highly successful meetings in New Eng- 
land early in September, this plan had to be abandoned owing to 
a partial physical breakdown due to exposure. The General’s 
personal campaign had to be curtailed to a few specially selected 
occasions. 

One of these was the Prohibition Day Celebration at the Ohio 
Centennial Exposition at Columbus on October 11. The at- 
tendance was very large from all parts of the state and Pro- 
hibition Day far outstripped every gathering which had preceded 
it. One feature was a great prohibition parade which required 
two hours to pass the reviewing stand. Both morning and after- 
noon the large Coliseum on the Exposition grounds, ‘seating ten 
thousand people, was packed to overflowing. 

Another notable meeting was at Poughkeepsie, New York, 
where the Prohibitionists had a parade a mile long, including 
one hundred mounted men, a gun squad, a drum corps, the 
W.C.T.U. in carriages, hundreds of Prohibitionists in uniform 
and hundreds not in uniform. The parade was followed by a 
crowded meeting in the opera house. 

In many parts of the country great enthusiasm was manifest 
in that campaign. At Minneapolis a parade two miles long was 
held, headed by Hugh Harrison, the leading banker of the city, 
who was candidate for Governor. At Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the 
local paper said of the Prohibition party demonstration that never 
before had there been such a crowd in the city. 

The National Committee spent $33,397, of which over $25,000 
had been raised at the National Convention at Indianapolis. 
Speakers were sent to most of the leading states. State and local 
committees raised their own additional funds. 

The Voice was very aggressive and resourceful. Its readers 
supplied funds that enabled the paper to be sent to the 60,000 


194 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


clergymen of the country and for several weeks to 500,000 
farmers. 

As has been mentioned, prior to the excitement over the tariff 
controversy which was precipitated on the country by President 
Cleveland’s low tariff message in December, 1887, it had looked 
as if prohibition might become a very prominent issue, if not the 
dominant one, in the campaign of 1888. That message precipi- 
tated the tariff question as an issue between the two major parties. 

The prospective direful consequences of Cleveland’s tariff pro- 
posals were tremendously exaggerated by the Republicans. And 
the liquor interests exultantly helped along the efforts to fool the 
people. 

Said the New York Bar, a liquor organ, December 30, 1887: 


The tariff is, therefore, a friend of the liquor trade and all should 
lend themselves to stirring it up. While politicians have their 
hands full with the tariff they will be sure to let everything else slide, 
and Prohibition, which has lately been making so much noise, will 
evaporate. 


Bonfort’s Wine and Spirit Circular, a leading national organ 
of the liquor interests, said, July 10, 1888, after the Democratic 
and Republican National Conventions had been held and had 
ignored the demands of the temperance people : 


In truth, ninety days hence this tariff discussion will have so 
monopolized public attention that the political temperance cranks 
will fairly be forgotten in their obscurity; and when that desirable 
condition of things comes about the trade need not fear any further 
abridgment of its rights. . . . Gentlemen of the trade, let us unite 
in rejoicing that the politicians are now twisting the tail of some 
other ox than our own. Hurrah for Protection! And then again 
with redoubled gusto, Hurrah for Free Trade! On with the fight 
and by all means let us probe the question to the core! 


This was one of a series of campaigns in which the liquor 
interests joined with the politicians in clamorously exaggerating 
some comparatively minor question in order to keep the liquor 
question from coming to the front. 

In 1886 an Anti-Saloon Republican movement had been or- 
ganized with Albert Griffin as its Chairman and headquarters had 
been opened in New York. While condemning the saloon it re- 
fused to demand that the party should espouse prohibition, but 
advocated that the people should be allowed to decide upon the 
question through constitutional amendments and local option. 
Very few men of prominence as officeholders were identified with 


THE LATER EIGHTIES 195 


it, the leading ones being Senator Blair and ex-Secretary of the 
Treasury Windom. 

It had been quite active in its propaganda and at the Republican 
National Convention of 1888 a deputation made an appeal to the 
Committee on Resolutions to insert a plank in the platform which 
in substance charged that “the saloon has become a vicious and 
potent factor in American politics in open alliance with the Demo- 
cratic party,’ and advocated the general proposition that “the 
people should have the opportunity to deal with this question 
through the ballot by the adoption of such measures as public 
sentiment will make most effective,” which, of course, was broad 
enough to include local option, high license or any other measure. 

This and a succession of still weaker planks were offered to 
the sub-committee preparing the platform and all were promptly 
voted down. 

Mr. Griffin himself was on the Platform Committee from 
Kansas. But he had been elected a delegate to the national con- 
vention by the state convention with the distinct understanding, 
so it was said, that his selection was conditioned upon his agree- 
ment not to insist upon any temperance program at the national 
convention that would be disapproved by the leaders of the doubt- 
ful states, especially of New York. Again at the national con- 
vention there was a protracted session of the Kansas delegation 
which refused to appoint Mr. Griffin to the Platform Committee 
except upon the condition that he would agree not to bring in a 
minority report. 

Even the delegates from a prohibition state thought it dis- 
advantageous to the national interests of the party to give a 
pronounced temperance man a place on the Platform Committee 
without pledging him to abide by the decision of the majority. 

This is one of many illustrations indicating how the interests 
of the national party prevail over a mere state policy. In order 
to win liquor votes in doubtful states anti-saloon men from pro- 
hibition states were compelled to subordinate their principles. 

The platform as reported contained no reference to the question 
other than what was regarded as a reaffirmation of the notorious 
Raster resolution of 1872. : 

Near the close of the convention, after the leaders had heard 
of the great notification meeting the Prohibitionists had held in 
the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, they began to realize 
that some concession should be made to the temperance people. 
The Boutelle resolution of “cordial sympathy” hereinbefore men- 
tioned was adopted. It was later learned that before being intro- 


196 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


duced this resolution had been submitted for approval to Sheridan 
Shook, a powerful New York brewer, who was a delegate. He 
afterwards said that he “put on his specs’’ and looked it over and 
said: “That is all right, but it is not quite strong enough, it seems 
to me. Perhaps it is as strong as this convention will bear, but 
we brewers wanted it a little stronger for temperance.” 

In the campaign this cordial sympathy resolution and the tariff 
were worked for all they were worth to keep the temperance 
voters in line. 

The Republicans having been defeated in the national election 
four years before, and fearing that a second successive defeat 
would be well-nigh irrecoverable, were driven almost to despera- 
tion in order to hold both the temperance vote and the liquor 
vote. , 

Mention has been made of ex-Senator Miller’s campaign and 
his confession that he made the campaign for Governor of the 
Empire State with the object of keeping down the Prohibition 
vote and saving the state for Harrison. 

Another confession from a Methodist Republican politician in 
Ohio showed how the General Conference of the Methodist 
Church was utilized to remove from the state of Ohio the most 
prominent Prohibition leader of the state, Dr. Leonard, who had 
made a remarkable campaign for Governor in 1885 and whose 
powerful speeches and inexorable logic were making it extremely 
uncomfortable for the old party church members of Ohio. One 
of his famous arguments was based upon the declaration of the 
Methodist Church that “the liquor traffic cannot be legalized with- 
out sin.’ Dr. Leonard proclaimed: “If to license sin is sin, then 
to vote to license sin is sin.” 

At the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in 1888 Dr. Leonard was elected Corresponding Secretary of 
the Foreign Missionary Board of the church with headquarters 
in New York. No abler man could have been selected, but a 
politician who had been a delegate to the General Conference 
subsequently wrote to a friend: 


I worked for his election for two reasons. First, he is an able 
man and if he attends to the business of his office strictly as he 
promises to do, he can ably represent us on that board. Second, 
this will take him out of our state for four years and leaves, as lL 
understand it, the third party without a leader in our state. 


It was also said that a number of Republican politicians voted 
for Dr. C. H. Payne, President of Ohio Wesleyan University, 


THE LATER EIGHTIES 197 


for Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Education of the 
Church for a similar reason. 

During the campaign Matthew S. Quay, the National Chair- 
man of the Republican party, was reported to have said that he 
was determined in this fight to “smash the Prohibition party.” 

Astounding and despicable schemes were resorted to. One 
was the theft of the Voice mailing list. Two clerks in the sub- 
scription department of the Voice, thinking the Republican Na- 
tional Committee would pay a good price for the mailing list, 
stole 108 sheets of the mailing list containing about fifty thou- 
sand names and sold them for $250 to James S. Clarkson, the 
Vice-Chairman of the National Committee, who four years be- 
fore had attempted to bribe St. John and who later became Chair- 
man of the Republican National Committee. He took the thief 
who engineered the sale to Chairman Quay, who was apparently 
cognizant of and approved the purchase of the stolen property 
and further rewarded the thief by giving him a jcb under the 
Republican Committee.* 

The stolen mailing list was used by the Republican National 
Committee to send literature to Prohibition voters. 

Another dastardly attempt to deceive the voters was the pub- 
lication at the expense of the Republican National Committee of 
a paper called the New York Democrat. It was professedly a 
supporter of Cleveland, but its function was to misrepresent the 
opponents of the Republican party. It contained violent claims 
that the Democrats were for radical free trade and there were 
articles praising the Prohibitionists as valuable allies of the 
Democratic party. It praised the Democratic National Com- 
mittee for printing and distributing Prohibition documents, en- 
dorsed the Voice and in general gave out such utterances as would 
lead its unsophisticated readers to believe that the Democratic 
party was encouraging and financially supporting the Prohibition 
party movement. 

Many thousands of copies were sent to Democrats with pro- 
tection leanings, and to Republicans with Prohibition leanings, 
the purpose being to alarm these voters and cause them to sup- 
port Harrison. 

Such were some of the samples of worse than Machiavellian 
politics which were used to keep down the Prohibition vote. 

On the other hand, about as discreditable tactics were used to 
hold the liquor vote. The electoral vote of New York was essen- 
tial for success. Every effort was made to carry that state. A 


1 See The Political Prohibitionist for 1889, p. 19. 


198 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


deal was made with the liquor interests whereby the Democratic 
liquor dealers were to throw their support away from Cleveland, 
the Democratic candidate for President, to Harrison, the Repub- 
lican candidate for President, in exchange for Republican support 
for Hill, the Democratic candidate for Governor. This was 
understood by the saloon men from the commencement of the 
campaign, and an analysis of the vote after the election proved 
it. In the liquor strongholds Cleveland fell badly behind Hull. 
In New York City alone Cleveland’s plurality was over 13,000 
less than Hill’s. 

To further insure sufficient wet Democratic votes to elect 
Harrison in New York City, Quay just before election made 
another bipartisan deal in which he withdrew the Republican Con- 
gressional candidate in one-of the New York City districts and 
wrote every voter in the district asking him to support one of 
the two Democratic candidates, a brewer named Cavenaugh. For 
this it was expected that some, at least, of Cavenaugh’s friends 
would reciprocate by voting for Harrison. 

Following the election there were numerous charges that pro- 
digious sums of money had been used to bribe voters and that 
large sums had been paid for the support of certain influential 
politicians notorious as mercenaries and manipulators of the votes 
of the saloon and criminal elements. 

Liquor’s ability to wield such a compelling influence in politics 
was due to: first, the mobility and bossability of the liquor vote; 
second, the fact that the good citizens remained so evenly divided 
between the two old parties, largely over obsolete issues; and 
third, because under the electoral method of electing the President 
the great objective in a presidential election was to win close 
states, particularly those having a large electoral vote, and those 
states were largely the ones which were strongholds of the liquor 
power. Party managers shaped their party policies so as not to 
alienate liquor votes in those states. 

The closeness of the four successive presidential elections, 1876 
to 1888, served to entrench the liquor traffic in politics so deeply 
that it became exceedingly difficult to dislodge it. 

In 1876 Hayes was chosen by a margin of one electoral vote. 
In 1880 a change of 11,000 votes from the Republican party to 
the Democratic in New York would have defeated Garfield, or 
a change of 14,000 votes in the three states of Ohio, Connecticut 
and Oregon would have done the same. In 1884 Cleveland was 
elected by a margin of only 1,047 votes in New York. In 1888 


THE LATER EIGHTIES 199 


a change of 7,300 votes in New York or less than I1,000 in the 
two states of Ohio and Indiana would have changed the result. 

This situation nationally with reference to the election of the 
President extending through sixteen years, and there also exist- 
ing in many states and localities similar close situations in local 
elections, was an important factor in the disgraceful competition 
for liquor votes. 

The slum liquor element of New York City was the marginal 
vote which was determining elections to the Presidency of the 
United States. This could have been avoided if good citizens, 
who compose the majority, had forsaken the parties catering to 
the liquor vote and had formed a union, as the Prohibition leaders 
sought, in a party free from liquor domination. 

The Prohibition party emerged from the campaign with a vote 
of 249,945, not as large as hoped for, but a 70 per cent gain over 
the St. John vote and sufficient to encourage the workers to 
renewed efforts. 


SELECT LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTIES 


Historical—General. 

DorcHEsTER, DaniteL—The Liquor Problem in All Ages, 1888, 
728 pp. 

One Hundred Years of Temperance—National Temperance So- 
ciety, 1885, 659 pp. 

Sscomp, H. A.—King Alcohol in the Realm of King Cotton, or 
a History of the Liquor Traffic and of the Temperance 
Movement in Georgia from 1733 to 1887, 1888, 823 pp. 
(Most scholarly in its field. ) 

CLARK, GeEorGE F'.—History of the Temperance Reform in 
Massachusetts, 1813-1883. 

Eppy, RicHarp—Alcohol in History, 1888, 728 pp. 

STEARNS, JoHN N.—Footprints of Temperance Pioneers, 1885, 


108 pp. 
Brain, SENATOR Henry W.—The Temperance Movement, 
1888, 583 pp. 


FAistorical—Prohibition Party. 

Back, JamMEs—Brief History of the Prohibition Reform Party, 
1880, 48 pp. 

——— The National Prohibition Party, reprinted from One Hun- 
dred Years of Temperance, 1885, 20 pp. 


200 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Casr, Grorce L.—The Prohibition Party, Its Organization, 
Growth and Purpose, 1889, 40 pp. 
Haccarp, J. W.—History of the Prohibition Party, 1888, 64 pp. 


Textbooks and Handbooks. 


SATTERLEE, W. W.—The Political Prohibitionist Textbook, 
1883, 183 pp. (One of the best books up to this date. ) 

Jurxins, A. J.—Hand-Book of Prohibition, 1884, 160 pp. 

Hand-Book of Prohibition, 1885, 180 pp. 

FUNK ANp WacnaLits—The Political Prohibitionist, 1887, 

116 pp. 

The Political Prohibitionist, 1888, 160 pp. 

——— The Political Prohibitionist, 1889, 140 pp. (Excellent, con- 
tain the best of the material from The Vouce.) 

The Prohibitionists’ Text Book, National Temperance Society, 
1883, revised 1887, 361 pp. Contains a collection of some 
of the best pamphlet literature—non-partisan. 

National Temperance Society Annual Almanac. 








Prohibition Philosophy. 


FincH, Joon B.—The People Versus the Liquor Traffic (col- 
lection of speeches, many editions) 1883—24th edition 
1888, 259 pp. 

WHEELER, Epwarp J.—The Principle, the Policy, and the Party 
(For many years regarded as the best presentation of the 
party argument), 1889, 227 pp. 

Mitts, WALTER THoMAS—The Science of Politics, 1887, 204 
pp. (Presents principles which underlie the party argu- 
ment. ) 

Non-Partisanship, or Do Not Take Temperance Into Politics, 
second edition, 1888, 207 pp. (Excellent for account of 
conventions of U. S. Brewers’ Association. ) 

ViLutars, Isaac—The Problem, or The Irrepressible Conflict in 
Politics, 1888, 237 pp. 

Bascom, JoHN—The Philosophy of Prohibition, 1884, 23 pp. 

Prohibition and Common Sense, 1884, 24 pp. 

Jounson, HerrickK—The Ground, Object, Right and Method of 
Prohibition, 1886, 16 pp. 

The Prohibition Party in Maine; Its Platform, Its Candidates, 
Its Convention, Its Address to the People, 1880, 12 pp. 

Bena Address of Prohibition Home Protection Party, 1883, 

Pp: 





THE LATER EIGHTIES 201 


Fincu, Frances E., and Srsrey, Frank J.—John B. Finch, 
His Life and Work, 1888, 567 pp. 

Hopxins, A. A.—Life of Clinton B. Fisk, 1888, 335 pp. 

Ricumonp, T. C.—The Issue of ’88, or Prohibition as a Politi- 
cal Question, 1888, 215 pp. 

RicHarpson, BeEnyAMIN W.—Ten Lectures on Alcohol, 1882, 
374 PP- 

Gustarson, AxEL—The Foundation of Death, a Study of the 
Drink Question, 1884, 582 pp. 

Woopgury, NatHan F.—Prohibition in Maine, Its Origin, His- 
tory, Results and Present Condition, 1833-1883; What 
Has Been Accomplished and What is Necessary for Com- 
plete Triumph, 1883, 16 pp. 

Taytor, GreorGe Lansinc—Moral and Legal Forces, 1884, 
24 Pp. 

Noste, Ff’. A.—Law and the Liquor Traffic, 1887, 24 pp. 

Monrog, J. M.—Relation of the Republican Party in Ohio to 
the Liquor Traffic, 1885, 85 pp. 

Eppy, RrcHarp—Alcohol in Society, 1888, 398 pp. 

BITTENBENDER, ADA M.—The National Prohibitory Amendment 
Guide, 104 pp. (Advocating an amendment to the Na- 
tional Constitution. ) 

NicHots, E. D.—The License System Repugnant to Sound Con- 
stitutional Law: Prohibition in Perfect Harmony with 
the Spirit of American Institutions, 1885, 102 pp. 

Report National Temperance Convention, 1881, 83 pp. 

CraFts, WILBuR F.—What the Temperance Century Has Made 
Certain, 1885, 192 pp. 

CrotHers, T, D.—Cause and Cure of Inebriety, 1887. 

Tatmace, T. DEWirt—Talmage on Rum, 1886, 114 pp. Ser- 
mons and Addresses. 

GoucH, Joun B.—Platform Echoes, or Leaves from my Note- 
book of Forty Years, 1885, 422 pp. 

DeEemoreEsT, W. JENNINGS AND OTHERS—The Purpose and 
Policy of Prohibition, No. 1 and No. 2. Selections from 
leading addresses for medal contests. 

The leading national newspaper of the Prohibition party was 
The Voice, New York, 1884-1899. 

Among the leading state prohibition papers were the Lever of 
Illinois, edited by J. A. Van Fleet, and The New Era of 
Ohio, edited by R. S. Thompson. 


Chapter XIT 


STATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 
1887-1890 


In the latter part of Chapter VII the earlier state prohibition 
campaigns, 1880-1886, were described. In that period all of the 
seven states, including the prospective state of South Dakota, 
which voted upon state-wide prohibition gave popular majorities 
for prohibition with the single exception of North Carolina in 
1881. There the negro vote had been lined up against prohibi- 
tion, and, besides, the law submitted was so defective that it 
hardly should have been counted. Up to the close of 1886 the 
record had been an almost unbroken succession of triumphs. 
There appeared to be a second wave of prohibition about to 
sweep over the country comparable only to the great prohibition 
wave of 1851-1855. 

But after 1886 there is a different history to record. Between 
1887 and 1890 out of fourteen states voting upon the question 
of the adoption of state prohibitory constitutional amendments, 
in twelve prohibition was defeated. ‘The only two in which it was 
adopted were the two new and sparsely settled states of North 
and South Dakota, which were just coming into the Union. 

Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that in the score of states 
where the prohibition question was submitted in the decade 188o- 
1890 nearly 46 per cent. of all those who voted upon the question 
voted in favor of prohibition. This includes those states where 
only feeble efforts were put forth to carry it and also those states, 
such as Connecticut, where it was submitted chiefly that it might 
be badly defeated and agitation silenced. 

The returns showed that public sentiment had reached such 
a stage that more than nine-tenths of a voting majority in that 
decade favored the principle of prohibition. 

Tn the twenty elections on state constitutional prohibition the 
total vote counted for prohibition was 1,758,899 and the vote 
reported against prohibition was 2,072,722. 

From 1887 to 1890 votes were taken and prohibition was lost 

2 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 203 


in Michigan, Texas, Tennessee, Oregon, West Virginia, New 
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wash- 
ington, Connecticut and Nebraska. 

Among the factors which blocked the further advance of pro- 
hibition were: 

1. The reorganization of the liquor interests and their ability 
to concentrate their national resources in those states where cam- 
paigns were being conducted. 

2. Employment by them of the most unfair methods of war- 
fare such as subsidizing the press, manufacturing news dis- 
patches, disseminating fake statistics and sytematically deceiving 
the people. 

3. The purchase of politicians and the use of the political 
machines of both parties by the liquor interests. 

4. The determined purpose of the old party politicians to sup- 
press the prohibition agitation as a disturbing factor. 

5. The advocacy of high license with the frequent accompani- 
ment of local option as a substitute for prohibition. 

6. Corruption in elections, falsification of the count, lawless- 
ness, violence and fraud. 

Amplifying the above factors: 

1. The reorganization of the liquor interests. After the success 
of prohibition in Rhode Island in 1886 the liquor interests formed 
the National Protective Association to take part in subsequent 
campaigns. The United States Brewers’ Association continued 
its activities and assessed its constituent brewers a certain amount 
on each hundred barrels of beer manufactured. In 1888 the 
brewers represented in the Association manufactured 78 per cent 
of the entire beer output. Apart from extra assessments the 
regular dues in 1890 were $40.00 per member and twenty cents 
for each one hundred barrels of beer produced. Most of the 
brewers being members any assessment could be simply shifted 
to the consumers and unlimited funds could be made available. 
The organization of practically the entire industry in one compact 
body made it so that the same principles as to the shifting and 
incidence of an assessment applied as those relating to the shift- 
ing and incidence of a uniform tax. The assessment, being prac- 
tically uniform, was not borne by the brewers, but was shifted 
to the consumers in the form of higher prices, or smaller amounts 
of beer for a given price. Consequently there was a great po- 
tential reservoir of corruption funds—all provided by the beer 
drinkers. 

The National Protective Association was the most aggressive 


204 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


liquor organization in the period 1887-1890, Its regular funds 
were provided by yearly assessments of $25 to $1,000 on dis- 
tillers and wholesalers, the amount paid by each having been in 
proportion to the amount of the business done during the year. 
In only a few cases have the amounts expended by the liquor 
interests been disclosed but it is known that in the amendment 
campaign in Pennsylvania in 1889 over $200,000 was raised in 
the city of Philadelphia alone, one single wholesale liquor firm 
having advanced $38,000. One newspaper estimated that in the 
whole state the subscriptions aggregated $1,000,000, and addi- 
tional amounts were raised outside, including $100,000 from the 
New York brewers. 

In Rhode Island in 1889, $31,000 was spent for the one item 
of manipulating the newspapers and $6,000 was paid for the 
service of a single political boss. 

In Nebraska $25,000 was furnished by a few brewers and 
probably as large an amount by the Whisky Trust with head- 
quarters at Peoria, Illinois. 

The liquor traffic was thus able to concentrate its nationally 
organized power in any particular state where a campaign was 
on. Some interesting facts relating to liquor corruption funds 
and their political methods were revealed in extended interviews 
which Brewer Harry P. Crowell, manager of the liquor campaign 
against the prohibitory amendment in Pennsylvania in 1889, gave 
to Colonel R. S. Cheves, a representative of the Voice, but who 
Mr. Crowell supposed had been employed by the liquor interests 
to defeat the prohibitory amendment in Nebraska in 1890. 

With regard to how the money was raised, Mr. Crowell said: 


In the first place we assessed the sales of all beer per annum 
at ten cents per barrel. We levied an assessment of $1,000 on all 
the large hotels and they paid it like little men and from $25 to $50 
on all the smaller retail shops. Besides, each brewer was required 
to solicit money from all kindred interest- -that is, every man in 
trade with whom they had dealings. Those engaged in making bar- 
rels, those from whom we bought our horses and wagons and grain 
and machinery, etc., were solicited to contribute to a campaign 
fund, and if such persons failed after a reasonable time to do so, 
a notice was forwarded intimating that a prompt compliance would 
save trouble and a possible boycott, thus forcing hundreds to help 
us who did it reluctantly. By this plan we raised over $200,000 
which was expended by the State Committee. Besides, local com- 
mittees in every community raised and expended large sums during 
the campaign and on election day. Appeals for money were made 
to the trade throughout the country and large sums were contributed 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 205 


by the Brewers’ Association and the National Protective Associa- 
tion. 


2. Methods of the liquor interests. In response to the ques- 
tion as to how this immense amount of money was disposed of, 
the liquor manager in Pennsylvania said: “Besides current ex- 
penses we paid it out to the newspapers, politicians and some for 
literature and some for public speakers.” 

The most discouraging feature of the prohibition amendment 
campaign in all the states where votes were taken was the atti- 
tude of the newspapers and the direct evidence that many were 
not only willing to sell both news and editorial space to the liquor 
interests but that many of them actually did so. 

When asked how to get the newspapers, Mr. Crowell said: 


We bought them by paying down so much cash. I visited the 
editors in person or had some good man to do so and arranged 
to pay each paper for its support a certain amount of money. 
Throughout the state we paid weekly papers from $50 to $500 
to publish such matter as we might furnish either news or editorial, 
but the city dailies we had to pay from $1,000 to $4,000. Other 
papers we could not buy straight out, consequently we had to pay 
from thirty to sixty cents per line for all matter published for us, 
according to the circulation and ability of the paper. It was under- 
stood with most all of the papers that we would furnish the matter, 
and so we employed a man to write for us and prepare articles for 
publication which would be furnished to the papers to be printed 
as news or editorial matter, as we might direct. 


The statement of Mr. Crowell was subsequently corroborated 
when in a court case a liquor firm, suing to recover money ad- 
vanced in the campaign, placed in evidence the details of where 
the money was expended and specified certain large amounts 
which were paid to certain newspapers. 

In the Nebraska campaign a decoy letter was sent from Louis- 
ville, Kentucky, to 170 Nebraska papers asking their rate for 
inserting as reading matter, without advertising marks, certain 
statements 1n opposition to prohibition. Fifty-six papers offered 
to insert such material at so much per line, many of them being 
willing to insert it among the editorials. The statements sub- 
mitted could have been easily ascertained to have been false and 
misleading. 

In several of the states many of the newspapers adopted the 
policy of refusing to print articles for or against prohibition 
unless paid for doing so. The liquor profits providing abundant 
resources and prohibition funds being limited to contributions 


206 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


given purely for the sake of humanity, the liquor side was able 


to control the press. 

In Pennsylvania the leader on the prohibition side charged the 
newspapers with having permitted their columns to be used by 
the saloons for the most shameful purposes—for systematically 
deceiving the people. 


They have printed bogus dispatches and unhesitatingly used what 
they knew was bogus matter in a way to mislead even newspaper 
men. They have printed articles manufactured right here in Phila- 
delphia under the guise of honest dispatches from Des Moines, 
Topeka, Atchison and other places in Prohibition states, giving what 
pretended to be facts and figures and asserting the failure of pro- 
hibitory laws and the havoc wrought by them. These “dispatches” 
have been printed without any marks to distinguish them as paid 
matter, yet they have been paid for by rum funds. 

We have sent to the Prohibition cities and obtained from the 
highest authorities the most conclusive denials of the statements 
made in the bogus “dispatches.” These denials we have carried 
to the newspapers that printed the false assertions hoping that mo- 
tives of decency and fairness would persuade the editors to make 
corrections. But their charge for doing justice was fifty cents a 
line with the condition that each correction should appear with an 
advertising mark. 


3. Wielding politicians and political machines. The support 
of politicians was secured both by purchase and by compelling 
obedience. If cooperation was not given the liquor interests 
would threaten to punish them at the next election. But in many 
cases the activity of politicians was bought outright. 

Brewer Crowell in the interview referred to above mentioned 
certain leaders who were paid $500 each. These included the 
Chairman of the Republican State Committee, the Chairman of 
the Republican City Committee and other leaders both Republican 
and Democratic. A number of local leaders were paid $200 each 
and $5 each was paid to men who worked at the polls on election 
day. More than one liquor manager advised that at least one 
political worker for each party should be employed for each 
polling place. 

Mr. Crowell also revealed that Quay, the notorious Republican 
boss of Pennsylvania, had bled the liquor men for three years, 
and he said: 


Our contributions to him came very near beating us at the polls. 
It was reported that we contributed money to defeat Cleveland and 
the Democrats got hold of it and a plan was on foot to have the 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 207 


Democratic vote cast for the Amendment as a punishment to the 
Republican brewers of the state and it would have succeeded if 
I had not found it out in time and “fixed” the boys, but it cost 
us a big pile of money to do so. We had all the workers on our 
side and the machines of both parties were with us. We paid the 
County Commissioner of this county, Philadelphia, to let us have 
the poll list exclusively for our use with the understanding that we 
were not to return the list until after election. So the Prohibition- 
ists with no window books, no money, no organization, had no show 
whatever against us. 


In a number of the other states a similar monopoly of poli- 
ticians existed. 

In Oregon the Chairman of the Republican State Committee 
Was a conspicuous servant of the liquor interests. He controlled 
the distribution of the large fund sent into the state by the eastern 
liquor interests. Under his shrewd management the Republican 
counties gave large wet majorities although in the Democratic 
counties the vote was more nearly equally divided. It was 
charged that he entered into a deal whereby the liquor vote would 
be delivered to the Republican party in the next presidential cam- 
paign and succeeding events and election returns seemed to indi- 
cate such to have been the fact. 

In Rhode Island a leading liquor man of Providence reported : 


We got the Chairman of the Democratic State Committee and 
the Chairman of: the City Committee interested in our behalf, also 
General C. R. Brayton, the head-pin Republican worker of the 
state. He took care of the Republican State and City Committees. 
We paid him $6,000 for his services. 


In Texas the liquor interests had the support of some of the 
leading politicians including the Lieutenant-Governor, the 
Speaker of the House and one of the most prominent Congress- 
men. ‘These endeavored to array the Democratic party on the 
anti-prohibition side and they succeeded to a very large degree. 

In Tennessee the Democratic Collector of Internal Revenue at 
Nashville compelled all his employees to contribute to the anti- 
prohibition fund. It was charged that a Republican Congressman 
was offered $5,000 for his influence. 

In Nebraska the Democratic party placed in its state platform 
a declaration against prohibition and the Democratic speakers 
assailed it with great zeal. The Chairman of the Republican 
State Committee was also publicly active on the same side. On 
the ballots distributed by the organizations of all the parties 
except the Prohibition party the prohibition amendment propo- 


208 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


sition was printed in the negative only, so that if voted as they 
were received the ballots would count against prohibition. 

4. Repression by Old Party Leaders. In all of these cam- 
paigns put together, only a very few men prominent in political 
life had the moral courage to champion the prohibition side. 
In fact by this time there had been evidenced a determined pur- 
pose on the part of many politicians to repress the prohibition 
agitation because it was a disturbing factor in politics. In March, 
1888, a prominent national Republican leader was reported to 
have said: 

The policy agreed upon and now being carried into effect by 
Republican leaders is to compel the great temperance agitation to 
crystallize around high license and local option and thus eliminate 
it as a disturbing question from politics. 


This scheme had been understood by the astute Prohibition 
leader, John B. Finch, in 1887. In conversation with friends 
following the defeat in Michigan but before the elections in Texas, 
Tennessee and Oregon, he said: 


No, we shall not carry Texas. The national Democratic leaders 
will not permit it. It will be defeated by more than 75,000 majority. 
The Republican leaders have determined to beat us in Oregon and 
I do not believe we shall carry Tennessee, though the majority 
against us in that state may not be very large. The edict of the old 
parties has gone forth, and we shall carry no more constitutional 
amendments while they are in power. Our next victory for the 
principle must be won by the Prohibition party and it will be im- 
possible to win by any other means. The education of the people 
in amendment campaigns will be helpful, but if it were not for that 
I should consider it time and money wasted to even go into such a 
campaign again. 

His prophecy proved true to the extent that with the exception 
of the new states of North and South Dakota no more amend- 
ments were carried for over twenty years. 

A further evidence of the purpose of the politicians to sup- 
press prohibition was the fact that in some states it was sub- 
mitted merely for the purpose of having it defeated. In Massa- 
chusetts of the twenty-nine Senators and one hundred sixty-one 
Representatives who had voted to submit, only eighteen Senators 
and ninety-one Representatives were sufficiently friendly to 
prohibition to vote for it at the election. 

In Connecticut when submission was first voted upon by the 
House in 1889 it was defeated, but when five days later Massa- 
chusetts rejected prohibition by a large majority the Connecticut 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 209 


politicians concluded to permit the vote and then used all their 
resources, including every daily paper in the state, to defeat it. 

5. Compromise on High License and Local Option. The 
method by which it was sought to head off state prohibition was 
to compromise on high license with the accompaniment of local 
option in some states as a sop to the temperance people. 

In some of the most notable campaigns, especially in Michigan, 
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, great emphasis was placed on 
high license, so much so that Miss Willard afterward declared 
that the Michigan amendment had “‘died of high license.” In the 
latter two states it was argued that the recently enacted high 
license acts with supposedly severe restrictive features should have 
a fuller trial before adopting prohibition. 

In some states high license had been enacted for the express 
purpose of heading off prohibition. 

In Pennsylvania, Mr. Crowell said: “We understood and 
agreed to the passage of the high license law before the amend- 
ment was submitted so that we could use it as a means to defeat 
prohibition and it was that and that alone that saved us.” 

The politicians had learned that the liquor interests were glad 
to pay a high license fee in return for greater security and that 
on the other hand a considerable part of the temperance vote 
could be satisfied with the “delusive expectations of restriction.’’ 
The objective of the politicians was to hold both sides and alien- 
ate the fewest votes possible and this was the solution they sought 
to impose. 

Many of the more conservative voters succumbed to the high 
license propaganda with the result that the cause was set back for 
two decades. | 

6. Liquor Corruption. Liquor corruption was most notorious 
in those states where the danger of the liquor interests losing 
was the greatest, notably in Michigan, the first of the states to 
defeat prohibition, and in Nebraska. In Michigan gross election 
frauds were perpetrated, especially in Detroit and Gogebic coun- 
ties. In Detroit, in one precinct where only nine votes for the 
amendment were reported more than seventy men declared they 
had voted for it. Many affidavits charging corruption were pre- 
sented but nothing was done. In Gogebic county many more 
votes were reported against the amendment than there were 
voters in the whole county. Under the state law there could 
be no recount of the ballots cast on an amendment. ‘This per- 
mitted the frauds to go unremedied. In Rhode Island the Legis- 
lature deliberately encouraged corruption of the ballot by passing 


210 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


a special act postponing for thirty days the going into effect of a 
new ballot reform law so that it would not become operative 
until after the election on the repeal of prohibition. 

Perhaps the worst corruption was in Nebraska in 1890, the 
last of the states in this period to vote, where the Prohibitionists 
put up the most vigorous fight since Michigan in 1887. For 
the campaign the Voice raised a fund of $34,000, which was a 
larger amount than the Prohibition National Committee had 
received in any national campaign year up until that time. Here 
a new kind of fraud was perpetrated. That year having been the 
year of the federal decennial census the liquor interests had con- 
trived to pad the United States census in Omaha, Lincoln and 
other cities in order that they might be prepared to stuff the 
ballot-boxes with an enormous number of fraudulent pro-liquor 
votes. In Omaha, the census supervisor had forced his enumera- 
tors to present fraudulent returns aggregating more than 40,000 
in that city alone. In Lincoln, in some wards three times as many 
people were reported as actually lived there. The extent of the 
fraud was not fully realized until ten years later at the census of 
1900. It was indicated by the population figures. By the census 
of 1880 the population of Omaha had been only 30,518. By the 
padded census of 1890 it was 140,452. But without any per- 
ceptible exodus, rather a steady growth, in 1900 it was only 
102,555. In Lincoln the population in 1880 had been 13,003. 
In 1890 the fraudulent census gave it 55,154, but in 1900 it was 
only 40,169. 

On election day the liquor interests were able to take advantage 
of the fraudulent census both by voting those colonized or tem- 
porarily in the state and by manipulating the count. 

But liquor lawlessness did not end here. The postmaster at 
Omaha refused to deliver prohibition documents and 15,000 
copies of the Voice were held in the post office until after elec- 
tion despite specific orders from Washington directing their 
delivery. 

On election day voters were intimidated and in many cases 
assaulted merely for attempting to vote for prohibition. Pro- 
hibition workers were driven from the polls and in numerous 
instances were arrested upon trumped-up charges and locked 
up by old party police officials to prevent their working for pro- 
hibition or even voting for it. 

Dozens of respectable men and women were assaulted in the 
streets, knocked down, kicked, rotten egged and chased by mobs. 
The toughs and thugs who had been hired to commit the lawless- 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 211 


ness grew so violent that the chief of police of Omaha declared 
before the night of election day that he was helpless and that the 
city was in the hands of a mob. Bloodshed was reported in nearly 
every ward in that city. 

In counting the votes there were many cases of deliberate 
fraud. In some cases precinct officials falsified the count and in 
other cases it was falsified by county clerks transmitting the 
returns. 

With all the lawlessness, riot, bloodshed, fraud and corruption 
it was remarkable that on the face of the returns the reported 
majority against prohibition was no more than 29,436. 


THE DRIVE AGAINST PROHIBITION 


The later amendment campaigns were accompanied and fol- 
lowed by a determined and concerted assault against prohibition 
in every state where it remained upon the statute book. It was 
marked by a widespread and organized systematic attempt to 
bring the principle of prohibition into disrepute. It resulted 
in the repeal of constitutional prohibition in Rhode Island in 
1889 and South Dakota in 1896, in the supplanting of statutory 
prohibition in Iowa in 1894, and some years later, in 1903, in 
the repeal of statutory prohibition in Vermont and New Hamp- 
shire. 

A study of the states where prohibition was repealed is instruc- 
tive not only with respect to the activities of the liquor interests 
and the process by which repeal was achieved but it shows the 
essential relationship of prohibition to party government and 
reveals some of the limitations inherent in the non-partisan 
constitutional amendment method. 

Rhode Island. Rhode Island was the first state to repeal con- 
stitutional prohibition changing a three-fifths dry majority in 
1886 to a greater wet majority in 1889. Here was an extreme 
case of the enforcement of a law being committed to its down- 
right foes. 

The constitutional amendment was composed of only twenty- 
six words. It read: 

The manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors to be used as 
a beverage shall be prohibited. The General Assembly shall pro- 
vide for carrying this article into effect. 


The amendment merely stated the principle or, perhaps more 
strictly speaking, the aspiration, and the carrying of it into effect 


212 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


was left to the Legislature and the executive officers. The 
adoption of prohibition had been largely due to the people becom- 
ing aroused because of the dictation of the liquor power in state 
politics and because of the disregard by the party in power of 
the very moderate restrictive laws. Yet the cause of prohibition 
was entrusted for its enforcement to the very same party against 
whose subservience to the liquor power the people had just pro- 
tested. 

A moderately good enforcement bill was passed, but when 
later experience demonstrated the need of additional legislation 
it was impossible to obtain it. 

Without being asked by the prohibition leaders the Legislature 
added a provision for a state constabulary to enforce the law. 
Immediately afterward a bombshell was thrown into the ranks 
of the temperance people by the appointment, as chief of the con- 
stabulary of a notorious political boss of unsavory reputation, 
an appointment designed to cause the amendment to be regarded 
as a joke. He was the same boss who three years later was paid 
a large sum of money to manage the liquor campaign for the 
repeal of the amendment and who also offered his services to the 
liquor side in the Nebraska campaign. 

Furthermore, the city officials of Providence, the leading city, 
made no serious effort to enforce prohibition and the city prose- 
cuting officer asserted that prohibition was “incapable of en- 
forcement.” With this situation Rhode Island was a glaring 
case of nullification by administration. 

Temperance Republicans endeavored to get their party to 
grant needed amendments to the law. They fought a good fight 
within the party and in 1888 obtained an apparently satisfactory 
platform declaration. But in the next legislature the liquor ele- 
ment in the party prevailed, blocked all legislation and voted to 
resubmit, allowing only twenty days for the campaign. 

It was later charged by Henry B. Metcalf, then a prominent 
leader of the temperance Republicans, that a deal had been made 
in consideration of both cash and votes whereby the executive 
officers of the Republican State Central Committee were to work 
for the repeal of prohibition. 

The leading newspapers fought prohibition with great intensity, 
magnifying the violations and attributing them to the inherent 
weakness of the prohibition policy rather than to the perjured 
officials and political conspirators who betrayed it. Notwithstand- 
ing that in Rhode Island prohibition was probably the poorest en- 
forced of any state, statistics show that drunkenness, crime and 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 213 


the other usual evils of drink were greatly decreased and that 
upon the repeal of the amendment these evils decidedly increased. 

Towa. It will be remembered that in 1882 Iowa had voted 
for a constitutional amendment by a majority of nearly 30,000, 
that the state Supreme Court had declared the amendment invalid 
on account of a technicality, but that the Legislature under the 
pressure of public sentiment had enacted a prohibitory statute 
which went into effect in 1884. 

Up until 1889 outside of a few cities, chiefly in border coun- 
ties, the law was fairly well enforced and there is a large mass 
of testimony, including official records, concerning the beneficial 
results of the law. 

In 1887 Governor Larrabee stated that in eighty-five out of 
the ninety-nine counties of the state the prohibition law was 
being enforced as well as the laws against other crimes and the 
Governor himself, who when first elected in 1885 had been an 
opponent of prohibition, was converted into a hearty supporter as 
a result of his observations of the working of the law. 

But in 1889 the liquor power, following its policy of punish- 
ing any party anywhere which showed any resistance, organized 
a bolt from the Republican party and, making alliances with cer- 
tain other dissatisfied elements, caused the defeat of the Repub- 
lican gubernatorial candidate who was committed to prohibition. 
The liquor balance of power was swung to the Democratic can- 
didate, Mr. Boies, a notorious anti-prohibitionist, and he was 
elected Governor, followed of course by increasing violation of 
the law. 

In the succeeding campaign in 1891 the Republican candidate 
was squarely committed to prohibition and in those years most 
of those who were party Prohibitionists in the national elections 
gave support within the state to the Republican party, voting with 
it so long as it held out any possible hope of enforcement. 

But the wet Republican politicians, in their endeavor to unload 
the responsibility for prohibition and go into the campaign of 
1892 rid of prohibition, knifed the head of the ticket and Boies 
was reelected Governor. 

There were two leading reasons for the Republican party’s 
abandonment of prohibition. One was its desire to win back the 
bolting liquor element hoping thereby to regain office and it 
was willing to compete for this mobile liquor vote. Instead of 
seeking to recoup its loss by adopting constructive statesmanlike 
policies on other issues to attract voters it succumbed to the lure 


214 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of the liquor vote and surrendered to the basest elements in the 
state. 

The other reason was due to the pressure of the national in- 
terests of the party. At that time Iowa had a Senator with 
presidential aspirations. At the Republican National Convention 
of 1888 he had received ninety-nine votes on one ballot for the 
presidential nomination but the Iowa delegates had been given 
to understand that it would not do to nominate a candidate from 
a prohibition state. It was felt to be politically desirable that the 
party in Iowa should put itself in harmony with the Republican 
party in the nation by repealing the prohibitory law. 

The conspiracy was definitely entered into among Iowa Re- 
publican leaders to overthrow prohibition in that state. This 
conspiracy became known as.the Gatch-Allison plot. In pursu- 
ance of this plan a high license-local option bill was introduced 
in the Legislature in 1892 but, although championed by the Re- 
publican press throughout the country, it was defeated. The 
Republican state convention of 1892 laid on the table a plank 
prepared by the State Temperance Alliance declaring for the 
maintenance and enforcement of the prohibitory law and adopted 
substantially the “sympathy” plank of the national Republican 
platform adopted three weeks before. The state platform in- 
dorsed the national platform and pointed with especial pride to its 
attitude upon the tariff, silver and temperance questions. The 
national Republican platform contained the following spineless 
plank: 


We sympathize with all wise and legitimate efforts to lessen and 
prevent the evils of intemperance and promote morality. 


At the Republican state convention of 1893, a plank was 
adopted which began ; “Resolved, That prohibition is no test 
of Republicanism’? and committed the party to the policy which 
was carried out by the next Legislature in 1894 in the enact- 
ment of what was known as the Mulct Law. 

The Mulct Law did not formally repeal the prohibitory statute 
but practically supplanted it by providing that in any city or 
county where the signatures of a certain percentage of the 
voters could be secured to a statement of consent, violators of the 
prohibitory law should be secure from prosecution upon the pay- 
ment of a certain annual tax or fine. It had the same effect as a 
license law with local prohibition in those counties where the 
requisite number of consents could not be secured. The saloons 
returned in all but about thirty of the ninety-nine counties. 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 215 


South Dakota. The second state to repeal state constitutional 
prohibition was South Dakota in 1896. There resubmission by 
the Legislature was accompanied by gross corruption. It was 
known that in the fight for resubmission in the Legislature the 
liquor interests spent about $25,000, a large corruption fund 
for a rural state at that time. 

In the subsequent campaign the National Protective Associa- 
tion, the United States Brewers’ Association, the Whisky Trust 
and a special organization called the Brewers’ Compact, com- 
posed of certain western breweries, all furnished large sums. 
The liquor interests of the entire land concentrated on South 
Dakota, and tactics similar to those which had been used in 
Pennsylvania and Nebraska were followed. 

Although it was shown that a large majority of the bankers 
of the state were for prohibition, the liquor interests organized 
a so-called Bankers’ and Business Men’s Association which was 
merely a paper organization with a name to give respectability to 
their propaganda. | 

Here, as elsewhere, the papers were subsidized. An eastern 
advertising agency received, in response to a letter of inquiry, 
letters from forty papers in the state offering to print anti-pro- 
hibition material, without advertising signs, as news or editorial 
matter at prices ranging from five cents a line to $4 an inch. 

Every town and village was polled by the liquor interests. One 
scheme was to send men over the state pretending that they were 
intending to establish beet-sugar factories and other similar in- 
dustries which would bring great prosperity to the people, but 
that these enterprises would be held in abeyance until the repeal 
of prohibition should be assured. Among the farmers they 
circulated the Farm Herald which apparently was a farm paper 
but which was actually published by the National Protective As- 
sociation at Louisville, Kentucky, and was a compilation of agri- 
cultural plate matter and adroitly written lying yarns telling fear- 
ful stories about the failure of prohibition. 

Meanwhile the outside liquor interests had been systematically 
shipping liquor into the state and shamefully violating the law, 
not only because of the profits involved but to demonstrate that 
prohibition was a failure, and make the people disgusted with 
conditions as they appeared. 

In these and other ways they broke down the morale of many 
citizens on this question and rendered them indifferent as to 
whether prohibition should be retained or not, so much so that 
of about 82,000 who voted in the general election the same 


216 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


day that the repeal of prohibition was voted upon, over 26,000, 
nearly one-third, did not vote on the prohibition question at all, 
whereas at the election in 1889 when prohibition had been 
adopted less than 4,000 had failed to express themselves. 

The vote against prohibition in 1896 was less than in 18809, 
there having been, in 1889, 34,510 against it to 40,234 for it. 
But in 1896 there was only 31,901 against it to 24,910 for it. 

As a result of the liquor power’s unrelenting drive against pro- 
hibition by means of misleading propaganda, outrageous viola- 
tions of law, and domination of perjured officials it succeeded in 
so diminishing enthusiasm for prohibition that many even of 
those naturally favorable to prohibition did not care whether it 
was retained or not. Fifteen thousand of the forty thousand 
who voted for it the first time had been rendered so indifferent 
that they did not even take the trouble to vote upon the question. 
The liquor power had accomplished its purpose in breaking the 
prohibition morale of many citizens with the result that state 
constitutional prohibition was repealed. 


ASSAULTS IN PROHIBITION STATES 


Space forbids an adequate recital here of the methods by 
which the nationally organized liquor interests in the decade of 
the nineties sought to cause a reaction in the prohibition states of 
Maine, Kansas and North Dakota. 

A letter written in 1895 to a Topeka clergyman by a promi- 
nent liquor supporter in Leavenworth said: 


To show you what you would have to contend with, the brewers’ 
syndicate of St. Louis alone has spent over $200,000 in the last six 
months to defeat the laws in small towns in Kansas by this method, 
which is strictly confidential. Take Clay Center, for instance, for 
illustration. They send two or three trusted men there with a 
quantity of beer and other liquors, get the names of the hardest 
drinkers in the town, and get them inside, fill them up on free 
drinks, get them drunk, put them out on the street, then have certain 
men to call the attention of the public to the fact that this is a preity 
town in prohibition Kansas. You can readily see the effect this 
would have on the public. This has been done in most of the small 
towns of the state and will be kept up regardless of expense. 


Still worse was the continuous pernicious activity in politics 
by which the liquor interests secured the election of men to office 
who ignored violations of the law and who in some cases were 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 217 


paid commissions on liquor sales permitted to be made in their 
territory. 

At one period in Kansas the rum power had such influence 
in politics that it perverted the system of metropolitan police 
to such a degree that although that system, providing for state 
appointment of police heads in certain cities, had been devised 
for the special purpose of providing a more effective centralized 
enforcement, it was utilized to foist upon certain cities of the 
state a metropolitan police system which compelled them to accept 
the open saloon, the chief limitation being that the saloons were 
subjected to periodic fines. 

In North Dakota the liquor interests made several attempts to 
resubmit and succeeded in having resubmission passed by the 
Legislature in 1891 but, the measure having to be repassed by the 
next Legislature, it was defeated in 1893. 


THE PROCESS OF MINING AND SAPPING 


A careful and comprehensive study of the history of state pro- 
hibition in every state where it has been tried reveals the fact 
that no matter how hostile or indifferent the officers, it has almost 
uniformly been followed by an immediate and decided decrease in 
drunkenness and arrests for drunkenness, has diminished crime 
and pauperism, and has lessened child dependency. -Prohibition 
has stimulated business, increased sales of legitimate commodities 
and improved collections; it has made labor more productive, and 
enriched the content of life for the laborer and his family; 
it has bettered homes and made social life more wholesome; it 
has increased school attendance and promoted the higher educa- 
tion of young people; it has augmented church and Bible class 
attendance and in general has brought about decidedly improved 
social, economic and moral conditions. 

Upon the going into effect of the law most citizens accept it 
and expect to comply with the new provisions. Public attention 
is centered upon it and all but the boldly lawless saloons close 
their doors. The distilleries and breweries shut down and for a 
period there is a decided contrast with the old conditions. Then 
the liquor element begins to learn the technique of nullification. 
Their main methods of undermining the law are, on the one hand, 
to keep up a constant propaganda that prohibition is a failure and, 
on the other hand, to manipulate politics in the attempt to make 
it so. Common to all anti-prohibition propaganda is the oft 
repeated assertion that prohibition is a failure. 


218 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Drinking, of course, is not completely stopped. The alcoholic 
crave still persists, old convivial habits are not erased in a mo- 
ment. Liquor is procurable by those who seek it aggressively 
enough and the liquor interests outside are eager to supply it. 
The officials, being usually the same type of men who were in 
office in the previous wet period, are not anxious to exert them- 
selves to enforce the law and are frequently in complete sympathy 
with the lawbreakers. Still worse, frequently, if not usually, they 
are in political alliance with them. 

Some of the saloon-keepers turn bootleggers, They prob- 
ably sell only a fraction of the liquor they sold before, but 
those who formerly regarded the unlimited liquor traffic with 
complacency now shriek aloud over the terrible results of a com- 
paratively small amount of liquor sold by the bootleggers. The 
liquor that was supposed to have been pure in license days has 
now become a poisonous concoction. 

Every case of drunkenness is magnified. Whereas a few 
months before drunken men were so common as to attract no at- 
tention, now every one is pointed out as a horrible example of the 
awful results of prohibition. 

The liquor interests from without attempt to ship in all the 
liquor they can, both for profit and to discredit the law. They 
supply the newspapers constantly with propaganda about the 
failure of prohibition. Lawlessness and crime being regarded 
as news, and law observance and morality, being normal, having 
no news value, the wet propaganda is published and the people 
do not get the facts or the vision of the benefits of prohibition. 

The clamor grows. Friends of law and order undertake to 
fight for law enforcement, the average citizen scarcely knowing 
how to proceed, and gropingly they discover that the machinery 
for enforcement is hopelessly in the hands of the enemy. People 
who have been more or less in favor of prohibition then grow 
disgusted and superficially conclude that there is something im- 
practicable about this remedy. 

Meanwhile the liquor interests and politicians keep up the con- 
stant bombardment of wet propaganda and the morale of many 
citizens is so weakened that they become easy victims of the pro- 
posal to surrender the prohibition principle and try some more 
enticing method. 

More effective from the liquor standpoint than propaganda in 
the undermining of the law is the manipulation of politics, Those 
engaged in the sale of liquor, whether the traffic is licensed or 
unlicensed, have a constant incentive to be active in politics and 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 219 


many of them are long experienced and expert in managing the 
details of local politics, 

The national organizers of opposition to prohibition also send 
their representatives to help pick wet candidates, especially for 
the more strategic positions, such as sheriffs, prosecuting at- 
torneys, judges, mayors and the other offices having to do with 
enforcement. 

They take advantage of the situation that the majority of good 
citizens do not take an active part in local politics, but the 
underworld and those seeking to control government for selfish 
ends are continuously active. 

They take advantage of the situation, too, under which in many 
communities and states a local political group or ring or machine 
has established itself and this group seeks to maintain a perennial 
hold on the offices. These groups are usually pro-liquor in 
sympathy or at best will not be active in enforcement. Under 
non-partisan prohibition these are not necessarily disturbed. So, 
although a prohibitory law has been passed those continue in 
office who hang over from the old wet period. 

Much more fundamental as a reason for non-enforcement and 
the undermining of prohibition than the picking of candidates and 
the continuance of political rings, is the underlying party interest 
inherent in the composition of the parties, and particularly the 
conflict due to the fact that the method used in the adoption of a 
prohibitory law has generally been non-partisan whereas the agen- 
cies requisite to the administration of law are generally partisan. 

There is a conflict due to the fact that the majority voting for 
the amendment is differently composed from that administering 
the law and prohibition is at a disadvantage because the former 
is temporary and the latter is continuous. 

This difficulty is due to the inherent limitations of the con- 
stitutional amendment method as applied to a policy which re- 
quires the continuous support of the governing authorities. 


LIMITATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL 
AMENDMENT METHOD 


The particular characteristics of the constitutional amendment 
plan of the eighties were that prohibition was voted upon directly, 
separate from any other issue; that it was non-partisan in the 
sense of being supported by no party; that the union or associa- 
tion of voters to obtain it was merely temporary, uniting merely 
at that one election for that one purpose; and that the balloting 


220 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


was usually the culmination of a high pressure campaign for the 
single objective. 

The same characteristics featured the adoption of state pro- 
hibition in most of the states up until the adoption of national 
prohibition, with the exception that in eight of the thirty-three 
states where state prohibition was in effect in 1920, the law was 
enacted by the legislature and in these no special elections were 
held; and there was the common characteristic both in the move- 
ment of the eighties and the later one, 1907-1919, that the non- 
partisan and omni-partisan feature was emphasized and the tre- 
mendous fact of party government was practically ignored, in 
some quarters blindly and vehemently denied. 

An analysis of the situation points to the conclusion that in 
ignoring the patent fact of party government lies the greatest 
single reason for the lack of the greater success of prohibition. 
A fuller consideration of prohibition and party government will 
be given in Chapter XXIX but a discussion of the relation of 
the political parties to prohibition following the adoption of an 
amendment is needed here. 

Provided a satisfactorily worded amendment can be submitted, 
the non-partisan submission to a direct vote is probably the easiest 
way of placing the principle of prohibition on the statute book, 
but merely placing it on the statute book is not accomplishing 
the great constructive objectives of prohibition. 

The stages in the establishment of prohibition are: 

1. The legislature frames the amendment and votes to submit 
it to the people; or in initiative and referendum states a fraction 
of the voters by petition submit it to a referendum. 

2. The voters cast their ballots directly for or against it. 

3. The legislature must enact the necessary laws to carry the 
constitutional provision into effect, such as penalties for violations 
and search and seizure and injunction provisions. Subsequently 
it must supply from time to time such additional legislation as 
experience shows to be needful. 

4. The courts construe the laws. 

5. The executive and judicial officers must enforce. 

Other essentials of a statesmanlike program include the 
harmonizing of other policies of government with the new prin- 
ciple as, for example: 

1, The revision of the revenue policy to provide an income for 
the government without dependence upon liquor for revenue. 

2. The improvement of criminal law procedure to secure 
prompt and effective enforcement. 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 221 


It will thus be seen that securing a majority vote at a single 
election is but a small fraction of the task of establishing pro- 
hibition. 

Prohibitory law differs from many other laws. Some laws, 
as, for example, the amendment granting woman suffrage, re- 
quire no further governmental action to make them function, 
but a prohibitory law to be effective requires the continuous 
exercise of legislative and especially administrative authority. 
Continuity and assiduity are essential. 

But 2 common mistake of many of the less discerning temper- 
ance people has been to assume that when a law has been secured 
the goal has been won and frequently after a hard-fought cam- 
paign has obtained a law they have relaxed their efforts and 
permitted their forces to be scattered. 

The very basis of the non-partisan vote plan fostered this mis- 
taken idea. Its basis was a temporary union for one specific 
purpose—the adoption of a law. 

After that fraction of the objective had been secured the bonds 
of union were dissolved and the voters favoring prohibition re- 
turned to their accustomed parties separated by the party dividing 
line. 

Although the law has been adopted there is no responsible 
governmental agency to support it and prohibition now becomes 
dependent for further legislation and enforcement upon legisla- 
tors and administrators who have been elected by a party, most 
of whom owe their election to the fact that they are strong party 
men and have served their party faithfully and well. 

Furthermore, the composition of the party majority which 
elected them is entirely different from the prohibition majority 
which obtained the prohibitory legislation. The party in power 
is not only not committed to prohibition but generally it has ob- 
tained power by combining elements diverse on this question— 
both the friends and foes of prohibition. Not infrequently the 
election to power has been the result of alliances with or 
dependence upon the liquor vote. The party being thus composed 
with the liquor vote a constituent element, the party interest con- 
tinues to be to retain that vote. Under the non-partisan amend- 
ment method prohibition thus passes out of the hands of the 
ephemeral union of its friends who adopted it into the hands of 
the permanently organized party in power to be administered in 
its most critical stages. In such a situation prohibition is left 
without responsible official support, a waif without a parent, 


222 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


foisted upon the party in power which in many cases despises 
its charge and wants to be rid of it. 


PARTY ATTITUDES 


A study of the attitudes of the major parties toward a pro- 
hibitory law which had been enacted in a non-partisan manner 
is interesting. ‘They extend all the way from temporary support 
to repeal, 

These attitudes may be classified under the heads of: (a) Sup- 
port by a party within a state—there has never been, 1926, com- 
mittal to prohibition by a dominant national party; (0) the 
straddling of the question; (c) the attempt to shift responsi- 
bility; (d) the ignoring of the law; (e) perversion of the law 
by using it to compel violators to serve the dominant party; and 
(f) repeal. 

1. Support. Such party support as prohibition received in this 
period was local, temporary, partial and handicapped by serious 
obstacles. Perhaps the nearest approach to unqualified support 
by the leaders of the party in power was in Kansas during the 
administration of Governor St. John. The Governor was the 
outstanding leader in the adoption of the amendment. He sought 
earnestly to enforce the law. But the difficulty was he did not 
have a united party behind him. It had been organized on an- 
other basis of union. There was a faction of the Republican 
party larger than its majority which was so opposed to prohibition 
that it bolted and caused St. John’s defeat and a liquor Democrat 
was elected Governor. The result was that two years later the 
Republican party refused to accept any responsibility for the law 
and a few years after this some of the Republican leaders not 
merely ignored the law but conspired to repeal the amendment. 
Party support under St. John was transitory because of the 
division within the party. His party continued to seek wet votes. 
Depending upon these it was organically incapable of effective 
support. Tor twenty-five years enforcement was poor. 

In Iowa in the later eighties the dominant party platform was 
formally committed to enforcement. But it was not united and 
there was an organized liquor bolt from the Republicans re- 
sulting in the election of an anti-prohibition Democrat. 

This manipulation of the marginal vote or wielding of the bal- 
ance of power has happened scores and hundreds of times in state 
or local elections in the history of prohibition. 

The liquor side was able to wield this balance of power more 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 223 


effectively than almost any other group because the liquor vote 
was more bossible, controllable, deliverable and corruptible than 
any other large group. 

This use of the balance of power by the liquor interests to 
defeat or discipline parties has been effective especially in those 
states where the two major parties were of comparatively equal 
size—in the close states. The advance of prohibition was so 
generally prevented in the close states that prior to 1912 there 
were scarcely any of the states generally classified as close states 
which maintained prohibition for any great length of time. 

In addition to the obstacle of party disunity and the danger 
of losing the margin of plurality and thus losing office, another 
obstacle to the policy of whole-hearted support by a party in a 
state has been the influence of the national party. 

Mention has been made heretofore in this chapter of the Re- 
publicans of Iowa desiring to repeal the prohibitory law in order 
to make their favorite son more available as a candidate for 
President. 

Another similar illustration was the case of Maine. In 1884 
James G. Blaine, of Maine, was the Republican nominee for 
President. That was the year when Maine voted upon constitu- 
tional prohibition at a state election in September, a few weeks 
before the presidential election. Mr. Blaine refused to vote either 
way on the amendment, issuing a statement that it was separate 
from politics and that he did not want to intrude a state question 
into national politics. : 

Although the people of Maine voted for constitutional pro- 
hibition by a vote of nearly three to one, there followed one of 
the worst periods of nullification in the history of prohibition in 
that state. A reason given was that the Republican leaders who 
controlled the party in Maine, desiring to enhance their influence 
in national politics, sought to purge themselves of any suspicion 
of hostility to the liquor traffic. It was said that certain of that 
state’s representatives at Washington gave some of the most 
elaborate wine suppers in the national capital. 

Mr. Nathan F. Woodbury, of Maine, who had been a partici- 
pant in the prohibition movement for more than forty years, in a 
discerning booklet on prohibition in Maine, published in 1920, 
says: 

The real underlying cause of the non-enforcement and nullifica- 
tion of the prohibitory law in Maine was the subversion and sub- 
mersion of prohibition to Republican national politics.? 

1N, F. Woodbury, Prohibition in Maine, p. 17. 


224 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


There have been at least three conspicuous occasions, 1888, 
1920, 1924, when Kansas delegates to national political conven- 
tions have refused to make any aggressive effort to promote a 
prohibition plank because they feared it would embarrass the 
national party and alienate votes in close states, 

Likewise on ‘the Democratic side the pressure of the national 
interest of the party has frequently been exerted. In 1887 when 
local prohibition was proving a success in Atlanta Democratic 
leaders in that city were forced by national considerations to 
abandon the prohibition cause there. 

2. Straddle. As a rule the party in power, faced with a 
situation where the law has been adopted in a non-partisan man- 
ner, seeks to straddle, to steer a middle course, and tries to hold 
both advocates and opponents of prohibition, seeking to prevent 
the alienation of either, 

It endeavors to uphold the law to some degree and may even 
adopt moderate platform declarations in its behalf. But it also 
caters to the wet vote and the concessions to that vote are likely 
to be the greater because experience has taught the party leaders 
that the wet vote if offended is more likely to leave the party than 
the dry vote. The attempt to straddle leads to all kinds of com- 
promises, to duplicity, deception and hypocrisy and results in lax 
enforcement and in bringing prohibition into disrepute. 

The Machiavellian methods used include the passing of legis- 
lation but the failure to enforce it; “letting the drys have their 
law but the wets their liquor’; talking enforcement but selecting 
wet enforcement officers; pretending to stand for enforcing the 
law but underhandedly seeking its repeal so there will be no law 
to enforce. 

Under this compromising, vacillating policy, there can be 
no true test of the benefits to be derived from real prohibition. 

One effect of compromising with the liquor faction is that it 
involves the policy of a party going no farther in enforcing the 
law than that faction will permit the party to go. If it goes too 
far in enforcement a defection of the liquor vote is threatened. 
There have been many cases of attempted better enforcement 
where the liquor defection has either caused defeat or dangerously 
reduced the majority. 

An example of the straddling policy of the dominant party 
has been the situation in Maine during much of the history of 
prohibition in that state. Prohibition has undoubtedly had the 
support of the majority of the people of Maine. Four times it 
has been submitted to a popular vote and every time it has re-. 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 225 


ceived a majority. In 1858, in 1867 and in 1884 the people voted 
for it, each time by an overwhelming majority. The vote in 
1858 was 28,864 to 5,912, in 1867, 19,358 to 5,536, and in 1884 
on constitutional prohibition, 70,783 to 23,811. Again in 1911, 
notwithstanding that prohibition in Maine was the target of the 
united liquor forces of the nation and there was a bipartisan 
combination of politicians endeavoring to bring about its repeal, 
a majority for prohibition was still maintained. 

Notwithstanding this repeated direct expression of the will 
of the people, prohibition continued to be poorly enforced most of 
the time. ‘The voters who composed the prohibition majority 
were not the same as those who composed the party majority. 
There was no party alignment on prohibition. The dominant 
party was organized on another basis and was so composed as 
to contain a wet element which it did not wish to alienate. This 
unwillingness to alienate the liquor element made the party sub- 
servient to it and caused lax enforcement. This condition was 
inherent in the two sided composition of the party. 

The straddling party attitude in Maine is corroborated by a 
statement of Governor Haines, himself a Republican, who in 
I9Q13 said: 

The Republican party has many times been much more interested 
in the question of which would furnish the more votes—the 
churches or the rum shops—than in the suppression of drinking 
houses and tippling shops. 


This situation was evident justification for the striking and 
discerning plank in the first platform of the Prohibition party of 
Maine, in 1880, which said: 


Resolved, That the first object of the Temperance Reform is not 
to crush the liquor traffic but the political power which sustains it. 


To crush the political power which: sustains the liquor traffic, 
an alignment and a coming together of the anti-liquor forces into 
an organized, conquering political party is necessary. 

3. Shifting Responsibility. Even though prohibition is the 
law, established by a direct vote of the people, the party in power 
frequently refuses to accept the responsibility and seeks to shift 
it to other jurisdictions. A familiar attitude is to shift enforce- 
ment to local communities making it dependent upon local offi- 
cials in the various localities. This means a decentralization of 
administration whereas it is the intention of prohibitory laws 
that centralized administration should accompany centralized 
legislation. 


226 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


4. Ignoring the Law. A fourth practice of a dominant party 
frequently has been to ignore the law. This means opening wide 
the door to the lawless and the worst elements in society. It 
means nullification and disregard for all laws. Yet there have 
been periods when prohibitory law has been practically ignored by 
the officers and even now there are so-called respectable persons 
and prominent newspapers who advocate ignoring the Eighteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 

5. Perversion. Still worse is the practice which has been 
used not infrequently of perverting the law by using it for po- 
litical blackmail, using it to compel bootleggers, jointists and law 
violators to throw their political support to the dominant party by 
toleration of their law-breaking, if they support the party in 
power, but by threats of prosecution if they do not. Sometimes 
this blackmailing takes the form of requiring votes, sometimes 
money, and sometimes both.” 

6. Repeal. Repealing the law is the culminating stage. Of 
the laws obtained in the great prohibition movements of the fifties 
and the eighties, fifteen were repealed so that by 1904 only three 
prohibition states remained, Maine, Kansas and North Dakota. 

Since 1888 prohibition has been repealed in five states where 
the Republican party was in power. No state prohibitory law 
has been repealed since 1911, and none since 1903 with the ex- 
ception of Alabama in 1911 and there it was reenacted in IQI5. 

This discussion of the limitations of the constitutional amend- 
ment plan where it does not have the support of the governing 
party suggests some of the handicaps that prohibition has been 
under throughout most of its history in the United States. 

John B. Finch, who was probably as active as any one in 
participating in the campaigns for state constitutional prohibi- 
tion up until his death in 1887, recognized the limitations of a 
mere law and uttered a truth which should yet resound through- 
out the nation when he said: 


Prohibition in the National and State Constitutions made effective 
by a live national political party pledged to carry out its provisions 
as a matter of policy is the only remedy for the most terrible of 
social and political evils—the liquor traffic, 


The blocking of the further constitutional amendment advance 
in the late eighties and the failure to make gains tended to dis- 
courage prohibition activity of all kinds and lessened the enthu- 
siasm of the succeeding Prohibition party campaigns. About 1890 


2 See Vindicator, March 28, 1913, for account of a notorious case in Kansas 
in the nineties, 


STATE AMENDMENT CAMPAIGNS, 1887-1890 227 


marks the end of what has been called the second prohibition 
wave, the first having been the prohibition wave of the fifties and 
the second that of the eighties. 

These waves taught some vitally important lessons regarding 
the need for a party in control of the government committed to 
prohibition as a matter of conviction. 

It came to be recognized by the clearest thinkers that an amend- 
ment was a splendid weapon but very inadequate without sym- 
pathetic officials backed by a political party pledged to its en- 
forcement. 

The experiences in these great movements made the argument 
for the Prohibition party still more compelling among the small 
group of thinking, analytic minds who made a study of the sub- 
ject. But with the public at large the drive to discredit the 
principle of prohibition carried on by a combination of the 
liquor interests and the larger parties had in so large a measure 
weakened the general popular enthusiasm for prohibition that it 
was difficult to make progress. This combined with the harden- 
ing economic conditions, especially among western farmers, 
caused greater attention to be centered on other questions and 
the progress of the cause did not fulfill the hope of the earlier 
part of the eighties. 

Bibliographical Note, For references see close of Chapter XI. 


Chapter XIII 
HIGH LICENSE 


It has been characteristic of the prohibition movement that it 
has had to contend with one compromise after another. In 
the eighties the chief method advocated as an alternative in op- 
position to prohibition was high license. 

In that decade high license was the storm center of conflict as 
in a similar manner in subsequent decades the Prohibition party 
had to contend successively with the compromises of the dispen- 
sary, local option and omni-partisanism. 

The advocacy of high license started soon after the movement 
for state constitutional prohibition began to make headway. It 
originated in Nebraska in 1881 shortly after Kansas had adopted 
constitutional prohibition. In that year submission of a constitu- 
tional prohibition amendment was strongly urged in the Nebraska 
Legislature but after its defeat was practically certain some of the 
temperance workers of that state mistakenly consented to try high 
license as a partial remedy for the evils of intemperance. 

Within a very few years all of the temperance workers as- 
sociated with that ill-fated venture deeply repented of their con- 
nection with its launching. 

The Nebraska high license law of 1881 fixed the state license 
at $500 for all towns and cities under 10,000 population and at 
$1000 for all cities of over 10,000 population. 

High license was merely the imposing of a high fee, usually 
$500 to $1000, as a requisite for engaging in the sale of liquor 
and in theory differs little from the theory of license in general. 
It was usually associated with certain restrictive provisions such 
as prohibiting the sale of liquor to minors and drunkards, on 
Sunday, and after a certain hour at night. In some states it pro- 
hibited chairs, tables and screens in saloons and in some states was 
associated with local option. Such improvements as resulted 
came from the prohibitory accessories of license but those pro- 
visions were not able to overcome the outstanding fact that high 
license provided for the perpetuation of the liquor traffic under 


the protection of the law. 
228 


HIGH LICENSE 229 


The effect of the proposal was to cloud the issue in the subse- 
quent prohibition campaigns. ‘The liquor interests in their propa- 
ganda would not face the direct issue of the consequences of the 
liquor traffic—the evils of the saloons, but they insisted that the 
contest was between two proposed remedies, prohibition and high 
license. They held up prohibition as utopian and impracticable, 
and asserted that it could not be enforced. Insisting that the 
evils would continue anyhow, they appealed to the short-sighted 
cupidity of many voters by making them believe that high license 
would reduce their taxes. 


CLAIMS FOR HIGH LICENSE 


It is interesting to compare the early claims for high license 
with the results subsequently experienced as examples of the 
unsoundness of arguments which predicate the continuance of 
the liquor trafic. AIl such claims and arguments fail when sub- 
jected to the tests of experience. 

The claims made for high license were that it would: 

1. Reduce the number oi saloons. 

2. Crush out the low dives and more objectionable saloons. 

3. Place the traffic in the hands of more responsible men and 
eliminate the evils resulting from liquor selling by men of low 
character. 

4. Lessen consumption by increasing the price. 

5. Diminish the influence of the saloon in politics. 

6. Make enforcement easier because those who had paid a 
high license fee would have too much at stake to ignore the re- 
strictions and they would see to it that they were not subjected 
to the competition of unlicensed places. 

7. Produce revenue. 


ANSWERS TO THE CLAIMS 


1. In the earlier period of high license in a number of cities 
there was a reduction of the number of saloons immediately fol- 
lowing the increase of the fee. But in many cases the reduction 
was temporary. Within a few years there were as many as 
before. In the later period most of the saloons merely paid the 
higher license and held on. All the saloons that could make a 
profit or hoped to make a profit remained. 

2. Those which were forced out of business were not the low 
dives but merely the unprofitable places. The small saloon that 


230 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


was doing the least business, and was therefore the least harm- 
ful, succumbed first. Increasing the license fee did not do away 
with the low dives. Different saloons were adapted to make their 
appeal to the different social strata. The low dive was the 
necessary complement and natural sequence of the so-called re- 
spectable saloon as the latter would start its victims on their 
degenerate career of debauchery and the low groggeries would 
complete the devolution. 

Increasing the license fee had several far-reaching economic 
and social consequences. First, it stimulated the saloons to exert 
greater efforts to increase their business in order to make more 
profits to pay the fee. Another effect was that it induced many 
saloon-keepers to resort to other allied evils as side lines, par- 
ticularly gambling and prostitution with all their unspeakable 
evils. Resort to the adulteration of liquor also was very common. 

It aroused the saloon-keepers to provide greater attractions 
and the saloon was made increasingly inviting, the type of at- 
tractions being adapted to the neighborhood or the social strata 
of its patrons. 

3- It placed the saloons in the control of those who could 
command more capital and promoted a monopoly power, both 
economic and political. 

By tending to make the mass of citizens more satisfied through 
the pretended restrictions and by further entrenching the traffic 
in government, high license gave greater certainty and continuity 
to the traffic so that it made it more safe for capital to go into 
it on a larger scale. In 1880 the capital invested in the manu- 
facture of liquor was $118,037,729; in 1890, $269,270,251; 
In 1900, $457,674,087, and in 1910, $771,516,000. 

It encouraged consolidation of the liquor interests. Tt was the 
period following the general adoption of high license that brewery 
ownership of saloons became general and the English brewery 
syndicates secured control of a large share of the breweries. 

It placed the ownership of the saloons in the hands of a 
different type of men, it is true, but those men were for the 
most part not individual saloon-keepers. The saloon-keepers be- 
came merely the agents of the breweries. The type of men who 
became dominant in the industry were men of financial power 
who promoted the traffic in and consumption of liquor by every 
means known to modern business enterprise, plus the use of 
diabolical methods unpermissible to legitimate business. 

4. Instead of lessening consumption it greatly increased it. 


HIGH LICENSE 231 


The per capita consumption of liquor in 1880 was 10.08 gallons ; 
in 1890, 15.53; in 1900, 17.76, and in 1911, 22.81. 

The price of liquor was increased as the cost of the license 
was shifted to the consumer. But the increased price did not 
lessen the consumption. The effect was that the liquor traffic 
absorbed a larger share of the earnings of the drinker and less 
went to his family—less went to purchase commodities produced 
by the legitimate industries. The increased amount wasted for 
drink lessened the amount available for expenditure for the 
products of legitimate industries and was a factor in the under- 
consumption which was one of the causes of the hard times in 
the early nineties. 

By commercializing the traffic on a colossal scale, by making 
the saloon more respectable, more attractive and more alluring, 
the effect was to promote drinking. Dr. Herrick Johnson said: 


High license gilds the traffic with a certain air of respectability 
and behind gilded vice the most danger lurks. The more outwardly 
respectable you make the saloon the worse you make it. The as- 
sault upon morals and manhood is then subtle, insidious, treach- 
erous. Low license asks for your son; high license for your daugh- 
ter also. 


With the appetite once implanted, the nature of alcohol is to 
produce a progressive appetite, requiring more and more alcohol 
to satisfy that appetite and continually producing greater and 
greater degradation and degeneration. 

The fact that under the license system the traffic is protected 
and legally respectable gives the liquor habit a standing in social 
custom which it does not have when the traffic is an outlaw. 
There is a vast difference between having young people sur- 
rounded by an environment in which the social pressure is towards 
acquiring the alcohol habit and one in which the legal and social 
pressure is against it. License, as Fehlandt points out in his 
book A Century of Drink Reform, permits, protects and pro- 
motes the liquor traffic. Prohibition does just the opposite. 

s. The political effect of high license was to still further en- 
trench the liquor traffic in politics instead of removing it from 
politics. As above mentioned, it promoted a monopoly power 
which functioned both economically and politically. Because of 
its monopoly power to increase its volume of business and shift 
the costs to the consumer, the profit was so great that the liquor 
traffic possessed unlimited funds wherewith to dominate politics 


232 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


on the one hand, and, on the other, the domination of politics 
was essential to maintaining its power. The saloons being politi- 
cal centers and able to control both money in large amounts and 
votes in large numbers, the licensed liquor traffic wielded a power 
which enabled it to become the center of a political trust. By 
making alliances with other vicious interests and with predatory 
corporations and with political machines it was able not only to 
protect itself, but to be a broker in political corruption and, par- 
ticularly in great cities, was able to sell offices, public utility fran- 
chises, profitable governmental contracts and immunity from 
punishment for violation of law. 

The restrictive features of high license made it a constant in- 
centive for the liquor traffic to continue in politics even in the 
larger and wetter states where the prospect of state prohibition 
seemed remote. The desire to escape the harassment of the 
restrictive features of the license laws and to prevent further 
hostile legislation furnished sufficient incentive to dominate 
politics. 

In the larger cities the liquor seller scarcely thought of obey- 
ing the law against the sale of liquor on Sunday. Violations of 
Sunday laws and other restrictive laws were almost universal. 

The liquor traffic always has been inherently lawless and it 
has constantly sought to manipulate politics so as to paralyze the 
enforcement of the law against itself. 

6. The claim that high license would be practically self-en- 
forcing, because those who paid the license would see to it that 
the law was enforced against the unlicensed dealer to prevent his 
competition was not valid for several reasons. First, in those 
places where liquor control of politics was practically absolute 
the non-licensed dealer was usually compelled to purchase his 
liquor from those in control and they were making a profit any- 
way. Some of those who refused to so purchase were forced 
to close. 

In those cities where the control of politics was not so com- 
plete the licensed saloons could not afford to try to prosecute 
others for lawlessness because they themselves were constantly 
violating the restrictive features of the law and if they should 
squeal on the unlicensed places they themselves would get into 
trouble. 

Another reason in some places was that the licensed saloons 
desired to have an air of respectability and they desired that the 
stigma of drunkenness should not be attached to licensed saloons 
but that it should be shifted to the unlicensed places so it could be 


HIGH LICENSE 233 


claimed that the evils of alcoholism were due to the lawless 
groggeries. 

The result was that alongside the licensed saloons in many 
cities there were many lawless unlicensed places. For example, 
at one time in Omaha, Nebraska, there were 276 licensed saloons 
paying $1000 each for the privilege of selling openly, but in 
addition to these there were 92 other persons who had paid the 
United States Internal Revenue tax who had no authority to sell 
from any state or local authority whatever. Similarly in Lin- 
coln, in addition to 52 licensed places there were 17 other prima 
facie illicit venders. Under the Brooks high license law in Penn- 
sylvania there were thousands of illicit sellers in such cities as 
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In Connecticut out of over 4000 
paying the federal tax only about 2800 paid the state license fee. 

A contemporaneous estimate of the results of high license in 
Chicago was given by the Chicago Daily News, April 9, 1888, 
in the following editorial: 


We have had high license in Illinois for five years, and while it 
is a sticcess as a revenue measure, it is an undisguised failure as a 
temperance measure. It in no way checks the consumption of in- 
toxicating liquor as a beverage, nor does it in the least degree lessen 
the evils or crimes from such use. ... The dives and dens, the 
barrel-houses and thieves’ resorts are as bad and as frequent in 
this city today, after five years of high license, as they ever were. 
Call high license what it is, an easy way to raise a revenue from 
vice, but let there be an end of endorsing it as a temperance or 
reform measure. 


High license increased drunkenness. In the later eighties and 
early nineties when its effects were a matter of warm contro- 
versy, several investigations were made with regard to the effects 
of high license in the high license cities. In view of the un- 
deniable great per capita increase in that period and the now 
universally recognized evil results of the high license system 
space need not be given here to a presentation of those statis- 
tical results. 

Two investigations, however, should be referred to. One was 
an investigation made of the arrests for drunkenness in 1886 in 
58 leading high license cities. Over twenty years later a similar 
investigation was made of the arrests for drunkenness in the 
same cities. ‘These investigations showed that whereas in 1886 
the arrests for drunkenness numbered one to 93 in the population, 
in 1907 they numbered one to 57 in the population. They showed 
that arrests for drunkenness had nearly doubled in twenty years. 
They furnished convincing evidence that a high license policy 


234 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


produced cumulative effects in the degradation of manhood. 
Visualized in the life histories of the drunkards they furnished 
a statistical confirmation of the Biblical truth, “At last it biteth 
like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.” 

7. Concerning the revenue claim of high license advocates, 
there appeared to be justification for acknowledgment that it 
was a revenue producer. But some facts connected with this 
need to be considered. JF irst, the fact that the revenue came from 
the pockets of the victims of a habit-forming poison. Second, 
that it came largely from those who were least able to contribute 
to the support of the government—from the poor and unfortu- 
nate victims of alcohol. Third, it came as a result of the con- 
sumers paying out about eight times as much for liquor as gov- 
ernment, local, state and national combined, received in revenue. 
Fourth, that the commodity for which the consumers spent their 
money was not only of no real value but a positive injury. Fifth, 
that the traffic entailed an additional expense upon the govern- 
ment in caring for criminals, paupers, insane, dependent children 
and in other costs of the traffic several times as much as it 
received in revenue. Sixth, that the productive capacity of the 
nation was tremendously decreased and the normal increase of 
wealth from which increased revenue might be derived was seri- 
ously retarded. Seventh, that the legislative and executive of- 
ficers furnished by the liquor political trust were guilty of colossal 
waste, extravagance, graft and malfeasance in office. Eighth, 
that the traffic protected by license was degenerating a large frac- 
tion of the citizenship of the nation—the fundamental basis of 
national welfare. 

In comparison with these and other facts the revenue argu- 
ment lost its force. 

High license, instead of being considered a repressive measure, 
or a step to prohibition as had sometimes been argued, came to be 
regarded as the bulwark of the liquor trafic. Opposition to 
license and opposition to the saloon came to be almost synonymous 
because license protected the saloon. 


THE LEGAL THEORY OF LICENSE 


In its legal aspect the permissive and protective character of 
license had long been recognized. Bouvier in his Law Dictionary 
had defined license as, “a right given by some competent author- 
ity to do an act which without such authority would be illegal.” 

Black on Intoxicating Liquors, for many years the leading legal 
work on liquor laws, said: 


HIGH LICENSE 235 


By universal consent a license is defined as a permission to do 
some act or engage in some occupation which, without such per- 
mission, would be unlawful. A license law, therefore, assumes the 
illegality of the business. . . . Taxation, on the other hand, assumes 
the legality of the business for any who may choose to pursue it, 
but imposes a burden, for the public benefit, upon those who engage 
init. The exaction of license fees for the sale of liquor is not taxa- 
tion, in either the ordinary or the constitutional signification of 
that term.’ 


Again Black says: 


Three leading ideas are involved in the definition of a license 
under the hquor laws. First, it confers a special privilege or 
franchise upon selected persons to pursue a calling not open to all. 
Second, it legalizes acts which, if done without its protection, would 
be offenses against the statute. Third, it is a privilege granted as 
part of a system of police regulation, and herein is distinguished 
from taxation.? 


Cooley’s Taxation says: 
A license is a privilege granted by the State. To constitute a 


privilege the grant must confer authority to do something which, 
without the grant, would be illegal. 


The Ohio Supreme Court (36 Ohio 199, 226) said: - 


A license is permission granted by some competent authority to 
do an act which without such permission would be illegal. 


The Supreme Court of Michigan (32 Mich. 406) said: 


The popular understanding of the word “license” is undoubtedly 
a permission to do something, which without the license would not 
be allowable. This is also the legal meaning. The object of a 
license is to confer a right which does not exist without a license. 


The Hlinois Supreme Court (138 Illinois 419, 1891) said: 


The refusal to license deprives no man of any personal or prop- 
erty right, but merely deprives him of a privilege which it is in 
the discretion of the municipal authorities to grant or withhold. 
It also follows that to adopt the policy of prohibition requires no 
affirmative action on the part of the authorities authorized to pro- 
vide for granting license. Mere non-action on their part results in 
prohibition. 

Other decisions similarly indicate the permissive feature of 
license. 


1H. C. Black, Intoxicating Liquors, p. 144. 
2 Page 156. 


236 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


THE ETHICAL PHASE OF THE LICENSE POLICY 


The fact that license is permissive in its nature caused at- 
tention to be directed to the moral wrong involved in voting to 
continue that policy. The personal responsibility of the voter for 
the consequences of his vote was urged especially by the Pro- 
hibition party. 

The churches and moral forces came to see the moral aspect of 
license, thundered against it, and the General Conference of the 
Methodist Church said in 1892: 


License laws are the liquor traffic’s strongest bulwark of defense. 
They are wrong in principle and impotent for good. We are un- 
alterably opposed to the enactment of laws that propose by license, 
taxing or otherwise, to regulate the drink traffic, because they 
provide for its continuance and afford no protection against its 
ravages. 


The Methodist Bishops in their official address in 1888 de- 
clared: 


License high or low is vicious in principle and powerless as a 
remedy. The liquor traffic can never be legalized without sin. 


Another result of high license was that it was an effective 
barrier to prohibition. It was sedulously advocated by the liquor 
interests and it was admitted by a number of the liquor leaders 
that constitutional prohibition would have carried in more states 
if it had not been for the high license counter agitation. 

It, together with local option, was the agency by which was 
accomplished the purpose of the politicians who wanted to head 
off the growth of the Prohibition party and compel the temper- 
ance movement to crystallize around high license and local option. 
It so entrenched the traffic that almost another generation was 
required to dislodge it. 

Finally, high license augmented the evils of the liquor traffic 
and greatly increased the difficulty of dislodging it. It enhanced 
the appeal to the cupidity of misguided taxpayers, enlisted the 
whole people as financially interested partners in the ruin wrought 
by the liquor traffic and subordinated the state to liquor’s base 
purposes. It gendered moral torpor and blindness among the 
voters and submerged ideals of civic righteousness. It deepened 
the entrenchment of the traffic in government and made more 
difficult the enforcement even of regulatory statutes. It bul- 
warked the traffic against change in governmental policy both 
because of the liquor power’s enhanced political control and be- 


HIGH LICENSE 237 


cause of fear of deranging public revenues. In short, high 
license resulted in the long continued perpetuation of the great- 
est evil of the age. 


SELECT REFERENCES 


Cyclopedia of Temperance and Prohibition. See index. 

FERNALD, J. C.—Economics of Prohibition. See index. 

Hopxins, A. A.—Wealth and Waste, Chapter XVIII. 

TuHompson, R. S.—High License, in Solid Shot, pages 82-104. 

High License, in New Era, February 27, 1887. 

TaLtMacE, T. DeWitrr—High License the Monopoly of Abomi- 
nation, pamphlet, 1886. National Temperance Society. 

Jounson, Herrick—The Delusion of High License, pamphlet, 
1886. 

WOLFENBARGER, A. G.—Stupendous Failure of High License, in 
The Prohibition Leaders of America, page 100. 

Lawson, A. G.—High License, Report National Temperance 
Convention, 1891. 

Bascom, JouN—High License Analyzed at Close Range, New 
Voice, January 29, 1903. 

HeatuH, A. R.—Does Drunkenness Decrease? National Prohi- 
bitionist, July 23, 1910. 

A number of the Prohibition Year Books contain material, 
notably the Political Prohibitionist for 1887 and 1889, Handbook 
of Prohibition Facts, 1892, The Prohibition Handbook, 1896, 
American Prohibition Year Books, especially for the years 
1908-1910. 








Chapter XIV 
THE PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 


Faced by a reaction in the non-partisan constitutional amend- 
ment movement and by the deeper entrenchment of the license 
system the Prohibition party renewed its perennial battle against 
the old parties which were now more completely subservient to 
the liquor power than ever before. 

There was not the glow of a new enthusiasm or the expectation 
of an early victory as there had been a few years before but there 
was a deep conviction of the supreme importance of the party’s 
dominant issue and a confidence in the correctness of the party's 
solution. 

It was realized that the conflict against the liquor traffic in- 
stead of being a battle had settled down to a long drawn-out 
war. In 1889 there was an editorial in the Voice referring to the 
Prohibition party as “The one party that has never dodged, never 
trifled with and never betrayed prohibition and which is organ- 
ized not for one campaign but for as many years or centuries as 
may be necessary to redeem our country from the greatest curse 
that afflicts humanity.” 

In February, 1880, there was a meeting of the National Com- 
mittee at Louisville at which it was determined to plant the party 
banner in every state or territory as yet partially or wholly un- 
organized, “keeping plainly before the people the fact that we 
are not in any sense a non-partisan organization but a partisan 
organization on the right side of the greatest question of the 
age.” It was voted to give special attention to the conversion to 
prohibition of our citizens of foreign birth, Those from whom 
the most recruits subsequently came were the Scandinavians. 
Encouragement was also given to the organization of Junior 
Prohibition Clubs. 

Samuel Dickie was National Chairman at the head of party 
promotion and John Lloyd Thomas was Secretary Ovidne 
National Committee, having been elected in December, 1888, to 
succeed James B. Hobbs. 


The year 1889 was an off year for elections but there were 
238 


OE _ 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 239 


good campaigns conducted in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and 
Ohio, where encouraging gains were made over those of 1888. 

In Ohio the state convention was regarded as the best ever held 
in any state up to that time with possibly one exception. It cele- 
brated the twentieth anniversary of the first state Prohibition 
party convention which had been held in Ohio in 1869. The 
nominee for Governor was J. B. Helwig, a prominent Lutheran 
minister and former president of Wittenberg College. In his 
acceptance speech he indicated something of the grandeur of the 
mission of the Prohibition party by declaring: 


I know nothing that will save so many souls as the success of the 
politics of the Prohibition party. The politics that will close the 
nine thousand saloons of Ohio and the 173,000 breweries, distilleries 
and saloons of the United States will save more souls than have 
been saved in this country in the last quarter of a century. 


In December, 1889, the National Executive Committee of the 
Prohibition party issued an address which summarized some of 
the party’s achievements in the past and indicated its course for 
the future. It said in part: 


NATIONAL COMMITTEE ADDRESS 


Despite its present inability to elect its candidates, the Prohibition 
party has exerted a most wholesome influence upon the country. 
If we may form an opinion as to the value of votes by the clamor 
made concerning them, none have been more important than those 
“thrown away” upon the candidates of our party. We have ar- 
rested attention, compelled thought, lifted our issue into prominence, 
made it a thorn, sometimes, in the side of the politicians, rallied to 
its support more than a quarter million of the nation’s best citizen- 
ship and forced it to the front where it can neither be ignored nor be 
settled until it is settled right. 

That, against great odds, the intensity of party zeal and the un- 
scrupulous use of an enormous corruption fund, we have increased 
is occasion for encouragement and congratulation, The issue for 
which we stand was never so strong as it is today, nor the prospects 
for its correct settlement so hopeful as at the present time. The 
liquor traffic is not only the enemy of religion, the opponent of civil- 
ization, the destroyer of manhood, the breeder of crime, the cause of 
poverty and the absorber of wealth, but it corrupts courts, bribes 
juries, buys legislatures, terrorizes politicians and dominates the 
Government. Either the traffic must be destroyed or our institutions 
will be wrecked under its baneful control. To make this question 
the dividing issue in our politics, to align the defenders of the traf- 


240 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


fic on the one side and its opponents upon the other side, to force 
the fighting in behalf of purer Government and a vast moral and 
economic reform, to lead in the battle against this organized evil 
is the mission and purpose of the Prohibition party. 

With the Democratic and Republican parties bidding against each 
other for the support of the saloon there can be no hope for a better 
condition of things through the ascendancy of either one or the 
GEET Ae ais 

However slow may be our progress in increasing our votes, there 
is going on as a result of our efforts a rapid and healthy develop- 
ment of public opinion and an awakening of the public conscience 
which must ere long result in a general revolt against rum-ruled 
parties and a massing of forces in opposition to such destructive 
domination. Confident that the highest dictates of morality and 
the noblest promptings of patriotism impel us to our present course 
and leave no other line of conduct open before us, we are determined 
to push our cause with all the vigor we can command and rally to 
its support every agency within our grasp. 

The time has come when not only on the one issttle of opposition 
to the liquor system but upon every issue of good government and 
national progress, we must challenge the right of any party to exist 
which submits to the dictation of the saloon—the influence of which 
brings into leadership the most corrupt and unscrupulous politicians 
and makes possible every species of infamy and bribery that can 
COMUNE OLIDAll We cUCCGsss sai rak 

What we need is a new party, a people’s party, not an office- 
seeker’s party, a party that can and will grapple with the problems 
of the time, that will dethrone the grogshop, and with the higher 
aims and purer purposes which inspire such a party will be able 
to consider all the great and important questions now before the 
people. . 

Such a party is the Prohibition party, and such it will continue to 
be. We can neither abandon it nor abate our zeal in its behalf. 
In no other party can the opponent of the saloon consistently 
remain, and we must continue to press it upon the heart, burn it 
into the conscience, repeat it in the ears of all patriotic citizens that 
the one problem, larger morally, larger financially, larger in all its 
bearings upon the prosperity of the Republic than any other 
problem, is the one for whose solution we stand. 


The address further recommended that speakers and editors 
give increasing attention to the economic phases and relationships 
of the prohibition reform. 

In 1890 there were Prohibition tickets in all the states except 
seven southern states and the sparsely settled state of Nevada. 
There were notable increases in the vote in Tennessee, Michigan, 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIFS 241 


New York, New Jersey, and in California where John Bidwell 
was the candidate for Governor. 

Tennessee, in June, held one of the best state conventions ever 
held in the South with four hundred and sixteen delegates present 
representing fifty-seven counties. 

James A. Tate, who had been state organizer for two years, 
reported that eighty-two out of ninety-six counties in the state 
were organized and nine of the ten Congressional districts. 

The convention nominated for Governor, the Rev. Dr. D. C. 
Kelley, a southern Methodist minister of great ability, who was 
said to be unsurpassed in all the South for courage, intellect and 
conscience and as an orator and champion of high principles in 
politics. 

After Dr. Kelley had accepted the nomination he was notified 
by a bishop of his denomination that he could not continue as 
pastor of his church unless he retired from the Prohibition 
candidacy. His conviction of duty was so strong that he sacri- 
ficed his pastorate and later resumed his ministry in another 
denomination. 

This compulsion by the church hierarchy aroused the State and 
caused the. people to rally around him so that the vote of two 
years before was nearly doubled. 

The year 1890 marked the election of the first party Prohibi- 
tionist to Congress. Kittel Halvorsen, a staunch party Pro- 
hibitionist of Scandinavian descent, was elected from Minnesota, 
having been nominated by the Prohibitionists and indorsed by 
the Farmers’ Alliance. 

The campaign of 1890 was marked by (a) the reaction against 
the high protective tariff embodied in the McKinley tariff bill 
which resulted in the decisive defeat of the Republican party; 
(b) the rapid rise of the Farmers’ Alliance movement in the 
West; (c) the concentration of prohibition interest in the pro- 
hibition amendment campaign in Nebraska. 

The Prohibitionists of the nation put up a hard fight to carry 
the amendment in Nebraska and hoped to make an unbroken 
block of prohibition states from North Dakota to Kansas north 
and south through the center of the continent. 

After the amendment was defeated with the help of the political 
machines of the major parties, there came to be a general realiza- 
tion of what some of the leaders had been saying, that too much 
of the energies of the party had been spent in non-partisan amend- 
ment campaigns and so-called cooperative movements which 
should have been spent in building up the party. 


242 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


There came to be recognized the futility of trying to carry 
amendment campaigns when they were doomed to defeat by a 
combination of the leaders of both old parties arrayed against 
prohibition. 

Even when obtained, a bare amendment without party support 
was sure to disappoint its friends. 

The leading thinkers came to agree, as expressed by the Voice: 


A prohibitory amendment, if secured, is a splendid weapon— 
nothing more; its adoption is a moral victory and may be made 
afterwards the means to an extermination of the liquor traffic. 


Some of the leaders pointed out that the continual non-partisan 
work created a wrong popular impression regarding the Pro- 
hibition party. It made people think that the party was not 
seriously seeking to elect its ticket but to influence legislation 
through other parties. Such action implied that the reform could 
be accomplished through the old parties whereas the fundamental 
principle upon which the Prohibition party was basing its right 
to exist was that a solution could not be obtained through the 
old parties, but that a realignment and a new political union were 
essential not merely for enactment but especially for enforcement. 

The fight of the Prohibition party was not merely against 
saloons but against the corrupt political parties and debased 
politics. 

Some of the best political editorials in the history of the move- 
ment were written in this period just after the disenthrallment 
from the lure of the seemingly easier method of non-partisanship. 

As the campaign of 1892 approached the outlook for the Pro- 
hibition party was better than ever before. Dr. Leonard reported 
that he had traveled from Maine to California and never in his 
experience had he seen the mass of the people so little prejudiced 
against prohibition and so willing to listen to arguments in its 
favor. He thought the cause was to be found in the dismal 
failure of high license. He referred to different states and cities 
where the license fees had been raised and without exception there 
had followed an increase of drunkenness. 

Ex-Governor St. John in September, 1891, reported that he 
had addressed about one hundred and fifty prohibition meetings 
in the previous six months and the meetings in point of numbers 
and enthusiasm had been the best he had ever known and there 
were more converts being made than at any time since 1884. 

John Lloyd Thomas, Secretary of the National Committee, 
said that the party was better organized than ever before, that 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 243 


state and local work was more continuous and systematized than 
ever before. He cited a long list of states where national and 
state organizers were busily at work. He thought that the effort 
of Republican managers to discredit and destroy prohibition in 
Towa and Kansas was bringing strong accessions to our ranks. 
He mentioned a large number of exceptionally strong and brainy 
men who were active in the service of the party. 

The Secretary looked with special hopefulness to the thousands 
of younger men who were rallying to the party who were too 
pure and patriotic to follow the old type of liquor political bosses 
to the destruction of their country. 

Another encouraging feature of the situation in the early 
nineties was the advanced position which was being taken by the 
various religious bodies. A number of the denominations in their 
conferences, synods, assemblies and conventions were empha- 
sizing not only the duty of the Christian citizen to use his ballot 
for the destruction of the liquor traffic but they were recognizing 
the party phase of the question and were assuming a definite and 
specific attitude toward the duty of supporting a party committed 
to prohibition. For a fuller discussion of these, see the suc- 
ceeding chapter. 

Another factor in this period which supported the contention 
of the Prohibitionists that the prohibition question was a national 
question was the nationalizing effect of the Supreme Court de- 
cisions. These decisions, discussed in the chapter on the United 
States Supreme Court and Prohibition herein, revealed that 
national action by Congress was necessary even to make it pos- 
sible for state prohibition to function. 


THE HARRISON ADMINISTRATION 


Conditions under the Harrison administration, 1889-1893, 
were so bad that the people should have become aroused. The 
nation was suffering the reaction due to the failure to embrace a 
high ideal. As stated in an earlier chapter, back in 1887 the 
prohibition movement was making such strides that it seemed 
as if it might become the dominant issue in the campaign of 1888. 

But instead of following the gleam, the nation in that cam- 
paign lowered its standard to the low plane of tariff and other 
minor old party contentions, and liquor’s deteriorating influence 
continued. There was a decided moral slump. For a decade 
America made little history to be proud of. Writers of our 
nation’s history give but little space to this period. 


244 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Instead of the nation experiencing a great national moral 
achievement it fell back to the dull drab of dispirited existence. 
Meanwhile the liquor traffic became worse and worse. The per 
capita consumption of liquor rose steadily and rapidly. In 1889 
it was 14.60 gallons; in 1890, 15.53; in 1891, 16.72; in 1892, 
E7113) arid miiéo3 "rsi2o! 

The crisis was reached in 1893 when there was a great financial 
panic. The wiseacres of the time claimed it was due to over- 
production. The big factor was under-consumption. The con- 
sumers were diverting an increasing proportion of their earnings 
to liquor, the production of which required both a relatively 
small amount of raw materials and a small amount of labor. 
They thus lessened the demand for the products of legitimate 
industries. 

The diversion of an increasing share of the family income 
throughout a nation to a commodity which is both wasteful and 
cumulatively injurious to the consumer has a more vital relation- 
ship to the economic welfare of the nation than is generally 
realized. It is significant that the two worst financial panics in 
the past half century, those of 1893 and 1907, each followed a 
tremendous increase in the use of intoxicating liquors. Each of 
these years was a peak year as compared with the years pre- 
ceding. Prohibition by turning the channels of consumption 
increases the demand for the products of legitimate industries 
and consequently increases the demand for raw materials and 
also for labor to produce both the raw materials and the finished 
products. It increases productive capacity, raises the standard 
of living, broadens the scope of demand and creates prosperity. 

Following the panic of 1893 the compulsion of hard times 
lowered the per capita consumption to 16.57 gallons in 1895. 

The administration of Harrison was extremely disappointing 
to even the moderate temperance men. ‘The convention which 
nominated him was presided over by one who was said to be the 
second largest wine producer in the country. To secure his elec- 
tion deals were made to secure the votes of the liquor Democrats 
in certain slum districts of New York. 

At the inauguration a large percentage of the committee having 
charge of the festivities were liquor dealers or friends of the 
traffic. Washington liquor dealers contributed about $3,500 
toward the expenses. At the inaugural ball it was reported that 
five hundred gallons of Roman punch were consumed, besides 
great quantities of stronger liquors. 

At social functions at the White House intoxicants were dis- 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 245 


pensed freely, to the discouragement of total abstinence principles. 
The President also did not hesitate to drink wine on significant 
public occasions when traveling over the country, and the influence 
of his personal habits was distinctly on the wrong side. 

The Vice-President owned a Washington hotel with a liquor 
selling bar which was notorious. 

The presidential appointments were very distasteful to the 
temperance people. Tor Secretary of Agriculture two men had 
been recommended by the National Grange, but these were set 
aside and a man was appointed who was commended by the 
Executive Committee of the United States Brewers’ Association 
because of the services he had performed for them on the floor 
of Congress. 

Many of the appointees were outstanding liquor men. Some 
of the worst corruptionists were placed in federal office, notably 
some of the liquor leaders who used unscrupulous tactics in 
defeating prohibition in Pennsylvania. 

The man who boasted that he had tried to bribe St. John in 
1884 and later, in 1888, had tried to steal the Voice mailing list 
hoping to destroy the Prohibition party was rewarded with a 
government office and subsequently in the same administration 
was made National Chairman of the Republican party. 

The pardoning power was used to release some of the worst 
political corruptionists. 

The Secretary of State used the consular officers as beer 
drummers. He sent a circular to American consuls in Central 
and South America and the West Indies saying, “Complying 
with the request of leading maltsters and brewers,” it was sought 
to procure information to enlarge the American malt and beer 
trade. 

In short in this period the victory of the liquor traffic was 
complete. It had subjected parties and politicians. It had suc- 
ceeded in compelling the government itself to serve its interests. 

In this situation some of the Prohibition leaders started out to 
secure at least a million votes in the campaign of 1892. It was 
thought that if such a vote could be obtained it would compel a 
realignment of parties. 

The agreement read: 


We, the undersigned, being profoundly impressed with the ag- 
gressive power of the Liquor Traffic and the overwhelming evils, 
Political, Industrial and Moral, growing out of it, believe that a 
strong influence would be exerted upon public sentiment and a long 
step taken toward the eradication of those evils if the enemies of 


246 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the Liquor Traffic would present as united a front as the liquor 
dealers present when their business is attacked. We therefore agree 
to vote at the Presidential election in 1892, for the candidates of 
the Prohibition party for President and Vice-President, provided 
the signatures of One Million Voters be secured to this Agreement. 


Many workers all over the country set to work to get signatures 
in their respective communities but the effort was started late and 
the required number of signatures was not obtained. 


THE CONVENTION OF 1892 


Four thousand delegates and visitors gathered at Cincinnati on 
June 30. Every state but one was represented. 

The address of welcome was given by the Rev. M. C. Lock- 
wood of Cincinnati, who had headed Ohio’s ticket as candidate 
for Secretary of State. 

John P. St. John was Temporary Chairman and A. G. Wolfen- 
barger was Temporary Secretary, assisted by Alonzo E. Wilson, 
James A. Tate and E. F. Stevens. Eugene W. Chafin was again 
Sergeant-at-Arms. 

Colonel Eli F. Ritter, of Indiana, was Permanent Chairman 
and Samuel W. Small, Permanent Secretary. 

Ex-Governor St. John characterized the convention as “the 
greatest and grandest in sobriety, moral force and brain power 
that ever convened on American soil,’ and Judge Gresham, sub- 
sequently Secretary of State under President Cleveland, one who 
was an impartial observer, referred to it as “the most moral and 
the most intelligent convention that the American people have 
seen.”’ 

There was a remarkable galaxy of able and earnest men and 
women present. All of the ten former candidates for President 
and Vice-President were there, except Fisk, the only one who 
was deceased, and Dow and Green Clay Smith. Among those 
most prominent in addition to those otherwise referred to were: 
Chairman Dickie, Miss Willard, Mrs. Gougar, Dr. Evans, C. H. 
Mead, Joshua Levering, William T. Wardwell, A. A. Stevens, 
H. Clay Bascom, Samuel D. Hastings, H. A. Scomp, M. J. 
Fanning, Colonel George W. Bain, Judge E. H. East, John Lloyd 
Thomas, Robert H. Patton, R. S. Cheves, Hale Johnson, Tallie 
Morgan, James P. Pinkham, George P. Rogers, Wolcott Hamlin, 
R. 5. Thompson, Volney B. Cushing, Father Mahoney, C. C. 
Crowell, J. M. Ritchey, Henry Ware, J. W. Bodley, Mrs. Caro- 
line B. Buell, Mrs. Mary Woodbridge, Miss Esther Pugh, Miss 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 247 


Mary Garrett Hay, T. R. Carskadon, Walter Thomas Mills, John 
Hipp and Allen B. Lincoln. 

Chief interest centered in building the platform. James Black 
was again Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, and E. J. 
Wheeler, editor of the Voice, was Secretary. 

For a couple of years there had been a tendency toward broader 
platforms and the platform of 1892 was the broadest national 
platform yet adopted by the party. 

The chief contest was over the planks relating to tariff and the 
currency. The convention voted down a plank favoring the free 
coinage of silver, by a large majority. 

Although including a number of subjects, the last resolution 
declared prohibition to be the dominant issue in national politics 
and the fellowship of all who agreed upon that issue was invited. 


THE PLATFORM OF I892 


The Prohibition Party in National Convention assembled. 
acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all true government, 
and His law as the standard to which human enactments must 
conform to secure the blessings of peace and prosperity, presents 
the following declaration of principles: 

I. The liquor traffic is a foe to civilization, the arch enemy of 
popular government and a public nuisance. It is the citadel of 
the forces that corrupt politics, promote poverty and crime, degrade 
the nation’s home life, thwart the will of the people and deliver our 
country into the hands of rapacious class interests. All laws that, 
under the guise of regulation, legalize and protect this traffic, or 
make the Government share in its ill-gotten gains, are “vicious in 
principle and powerless as a remedy.” We declare anew for the en- 
tire suppression of the manufacture, sale, importation, exportation, 
and transportation of alcoholic liquors as a beverage by Federal and 
State legislation. The full powers of Government should be exerted 
to secure this result. No party that fails to recognize the dominant 
nature of this issue in American politics deserves the support of 
the people. 

2. No citizen should be denied the right to vote on account of 
sex, and equal labor should receive equal wages without regard 
to sex. 

3. The money of the country should consist of gold, silver, and 
paper, and be issued by the general Government only, and in suf- 
ficient quantity to meet the demands of business and give full 
opportunity for the employment of labor. To this end an increase 
in the volume of money is demanded. No individual or corporation 
should be allowed to make any profit through its issue. It should 


248 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


be fixed at a definite sum per capita, and made to increase with our 
increase in population. 

4. Tariff should be levied only as defense against foreign govern- 
ments which levy tariff upon, or bar out our products from their 
markets, revenue being incidental. The residue of means necessary 
to an economical administration of the Government should be raised 
by levying the burden on what the people possess, instead of upon 
what they consume. 

Railroad, telegraph, and other public corporations should be 
controlled by the Government in the interest of the people, and no 
higher charges allowed than necessary to give fair interest on the 
capital actually invested. 

6. Foreign immigration has become a burden upon industry, one 
of the factors in depressing wages and causing discontent; therefore, 
our immigration laws should be revised and strictly enforced. The 
time of residence for naturalization should be extended, and no 
naturalized person should be allowed to vote until one year after he 
becomes a citizen. 

7. Non-resident aliens should not be allowed to acquire land in 
this country, and we favor the limitation of individual and corporate 
ownership of land. All unearned grants of lands to railroad com- 
panies or other corporations should be reclaimed. 

8. Years of inaction and treachery on the part of the Republican 
and Democratic parties have resulted in the present reign of mob 
law, and we demand that every citizen be protected in the right of 
trial by constitutional tribunals. 

g. All men should be protected by law in their right to one day 
of rest in seven. 

10. Arbitration is the wisest and most economical and humane 
way of settling national differences. 

11. Speculations in margins, the cornering of grain, money and 
products, and the formation of pools, trusts, and combinations for 
the arbitrary advancement of prices should be suppressed. 

12. We pledge that the Prohibition Party, if elected to power, 
will ever grant just pensions to disabled veterans of the Union army 
and navy, their widows and orphans. 

13. We stand unequivocally for the American public school and 
opposed to any appropriation of public moneys for sectarian schools. 
We declare that only by united support of such common schools, 
taught in the English language, can we hope to become and remain 
a homogeneous and harmonious people. 

14. We arraign the Republican and Democratic parties as false 
to the standards reared by their founders; as faithless to the prin- 
ciples of the illustrious leaders of the past to whom they do homage 
with the lips, as recreant to the higher law, which is as inflexible in 
political affairs as in personal life; and as no longer embddying the 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 249 


aspirations of the American people, or inviting the confidence of 
enlightened, progressive patriotism. Their protest against the ad- 
mission of “moral issues” into politics is a confession of their own 
moral degeneracy. The declaration of an eminent authority that 
municipal misrule is “the one conspicuous failure of American poli- 
tics,” follows as a natural consequence of such degeneracy, and is 
true alike of cities under Republican and Democratic control. Each 
accuses the other of extravagance in Congressional appropriations, 
and both are alike guilty. Each protests, when out of power, against 
infraction of the Civil Service laws, and each when in power violates 
those laws in letter and in spirit. Each professes fealty to the 
interests of the toiling masses, but both covertly truckle to the 
money power in their administration of public affairs. Even 
the tariff issue, as represented in the Democratic Mills bill and the 
Republican McKinley bill, is no longer treated by them as an issue 
between great and divergent principles of government, but is a mere 
catering to sectional and class interests. The attempt in many states 
to wrest the Australian ballot system from its true purpose, and so 
to deform it as to render it extremely difficult for new parties to 
exercise the right of suffrage, is an outrage upon popular govern- 
ment. The competition of both old parties for the vote of the slums, 
and their assiduous courting of the liquor power and subserviency 
to the money power, have resulted in placing those powers in the 
position of practical arbiters of the destinies of the nation. We 
renew our protest against these perilous tendencies, and invite all 
citizens to join us in the upbuilding of a party that has shown, in 
five national campaigns, that it prefers temporary defeat to an 
abandonment of the claims of justice, sobriety, personal rights and 
the protection of American homes. 

15. Recognizing and declaring that Prohibition of the liquor 
traffic has become the dominant issue in national politics, we invite. 
to full party fellowship all those who, on this one dominant issue, 
are with us agreed, in the full belief that this party can and will 
remove sectional differences, promote national unity, and insure the 
best welfare of our entire land. 


THE NOMINEES 


Prior to the convention a number of candidates for President 
had been mentioned, including John Bidwell, H. Clay Bascom, 
Gideon T. Stewart, W. Jennings Demorest, Colonel George W. 
Bain, Dr, A. B. Leonard, Colonel Eli F. Ritter, Judge Amos 
Briggs, Judge E. H. East, William T. Wardwell, Walter B. 
Hill, Volney B. Cushing, A. G. Wolfenbarger and D. C. Kelley. 

Notwithstanding the wealth of presidential timber, as the con- 


vention drew near the sentiment favored General John Bidwell 


250 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of California who was nominated on the first ballot. Others 
who received votes were Gideon T. Stewart, of Ohio, and W. 
Jennings Demorest and H. Clay Bascom, both of New York. 

For President. John Bidwell was a master among the sturdy 
pioneer builders of the great West. Born in Chautauqua County, 
New York, in 1819, as a young man he went West and in 1841 
was one of the sixty-nine who formed the first party of white 
men to cross the Rocky Mountains to California. In 1846 he 
served as an officer in the war which gave California to the 
United States. 

In 1849 at the age of thirty he was a member of the first 
Constitutional Convention of California and the same year was 
elected a member of the first Senate of California. 

In 1860 he was a delegate to the National Democratic Con- 
vention at Charleston and was the only member of the California 
delegation who stood loyal to the Union. In 1863 he was ap- 
pointed Brigadier-General of the California Militia. In 1864 he 
was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Balti- 
more which renominated Lincoln. 

In the same year he was elected to Congress and served as 
Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture. 

In 1875 he was nominated for Governor of California on an 
Anti-monopoly or Non-partisan ticket and recetved 30,000 votes, 
about one-fourth of the total vote. 

For a number of years he had been prominently identified with 
the Prohibition party and in 1890 was its candidate for Governor. 

He had a large ranch of 25,000 acres of fertile land known as 
Rancho Chico, much of it in a high state of cultivation. Twelve 
hundred acres were in orchard, raising the fine fruits for which 
California is noted. Industries associated with agricultural pro- 
duction on a large scale were also carried on, including flouring 
mills, a fruit cannery, vinegar works and a dairy. 

His home was the center of hospitality to all Prohibition 
workers who journeyed that way. The spacious and handsome 
grounds containing semi-tropical plants and flowers from all 
parts of the globe were exceedingly attractive. Mrs. Bidwell 
was a woman of charming personality who made Prohibition her 
chief objective to the end of her life. 

General and Mrs. Bidwell were especially interested in uplift- 
ing the Indians. There were two hundred or more who lived on 
their estate. These true philanthropists gave much of their time 
in personally ministering to the moral and spiritual welfare of 
their red-skinned wards, For years, on every Sunday, Sunday 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 251 


school and preaching services were conducted for them in which 
General and Mrs. Bidwell themselves did the teaching and 
preaching. 

Flis temperance convictions were illustrated by the fact that 
back in the sixties he destroyed a wine vineyard on his estate 
because on his return from two years’ service in Washington as 
a Congressman he observed that the wine produced on his estate 
was making drunkards, Without hesitation he dug up and 
burned the wine-grape vines. 

Fle was a man of splendid physique, stately in appearance, 
cultivated in mind and was in every way worthy to be President 
of the United States. His death occurred in 1900. 

For Vice-President. James B. Cranfill, of Texas, was nomi- 
nated. He was likewise a product of the pioneer life of a new 
country. Precocious and versatile he had served as teacher, 
doctor, editor and preacher. 

As an editor his paper had been the leading exponent of pro- 
hibition in the Amendment Campaign in 1887. He achieved 
great distinction as an aggressive fighter against the liquor traffic. 

As superintendent of the Baptist Mission work in Texas he 
had been instrumental in greatly expanding the work of that 
great denomination. He was forceful, aggressive and capable 
and was the youngest man ever nominated for Vice-President, 
in fact, he did not reach the age of thirty-five until some months 
after the convention. 

Geographically the convention went to extremes in making 
nominations—Bidwell from the Far West and Cranfill from the 
South. This proved to have been a mistake as General Bidwell, 
splendid man though he was, was not sufficiently known east of 
the Rockies and was hindered from making an active personal 
canvass owing to the fact that financial conditions arose just after 
his nomination which put his whole fortune at hazard. 

Dr. Cranfill early in the campaign started on a campaign tour 
of the South but was compelled to give it up on account of his 
health. Thus the candidates were able to be of little service as 
campaigners and both were too far removed from the centers 
of population to wield the influence where needed. 


THE CAMPAIGN 


General Bidwell issued a comprehensive Letter of Acceptance 
expounding the platform in a masterly way. 
The Prohibitionists held hundreds of meetings and a number 


252 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of prominent converts were made. This was notably the case in 
lowa where decent citizens were becoming disgusted with the 
evident purpose of both old parties to do away with prohibition. 

In the campaign generally there was comparatively little en- 
thusiasm. Both of the major candidates, Harrison and Cleve- 
land, had each served a term in the Presidency, each had been 
elected by a narrow margin and it was realized that the election 
would be close. Again, tremendous pressure was brought to bear 
upon voters to vote the old party ticket just once more. Both 
parties seemed to rely more upon the ability of their machines to 
corral the votes than upon the attractive power of their principles. 
Cleveland in his Letter of Acceptance made a bid for the saloon 
vote by promising individual liberty and refusing sanction to 
(so-called) “sumptuary laws.’ He was elected. 

“A new factor which lessened the growth of the Prohibition 
party in this campaign was the sudden rise of the Populist party. 
It had its chief strength in the West and South. It voiced the 
vigorous protest of the agricultural classes against the hard eco- 
nomic conditions which harassed them. Burdened with an ac- 
cumulation of debt, receiving but a small return from the products 
of their toil and unable to obtain any solution of their difficulties 
from the parties in power they pooled their dissatisfaction and 
expressed it at the ballot-box by voting for the newly organized 
Populist party. 

That party polled a million votes and succeeded in doing what 
the Prohibition party had been hoping to do—made its major 
issue the divisive one in the succeeding election. 

The Prohibition party made a small gain but the alignment on 
this issue had failed to come. Again it was side-tracked as a 
dominant issue, this time by the Populists. 

In the East and North the Prohibition party made decided and 
encouraging gains and in these sections the Prohibition vote was 
larger than the Populist vote by more than 74,000. But the vote 
in the whole country was held to 264,13 3 as compared to 240,772 
for Fisk in 1888. 

However, the Prohibitionists were not discouraged. In fact 
they welcomed the Populist uprising because it tended to break 
up the old parties. The Populist party was looked upon as a 
temporary party serving a function parallel to that of the Know 
Nothing party back in the fifties which had performed a valuable 
service in helping to break up the old alignments, 

The Populists attacked class legislation—the granting of 
special privileges to a few at the expense of the many. They 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 253 


also attacked corruption in legislative bodies. But the purchase 
of special privileges from a legislature implies legislators who are 
purchased, directly or indirectly. 

Where did these legislators come from; how did they get to 
the legislature? In the great majority of cases they were sent 
to the legislature through the saloon vote or at least the saloon 
vote in alliance with the corrupt interests and the politicians. The 
liquor power created and manipulated a horde of venal and con- 
trollable voters and placed in legislative bodies the type of men 
who were easy picking for corruptionists. The liquor power was 
a leading factor in the development of the political trust which 
distributed special privileges and fattened on the profits. 

The Prohibitionists pointed out that the liquor traffic was the 
Thermopylae of reform, the pass or barrier which must be taken 
before any permanent progress could be achieved. The liquor 
traffic was blocking the way to reform and was baffling every 
effort for moral and political betterment due to the fact that, on 
the one hand, alcohol debauches individuals out of whom all 
organized society is built, and, on the other hand, it debauches 
politics through which alone important changes must come. 

The Populists were able to see only the surface indications. 
They could see the corrupt lobby and the corrupt corporations 
behind it. They could see the corrupt legislature but they did not 
examine deeply enough to perceive the power which creates the 
corrupt legislature. 

The first plank of the Prohibition platform of 1892 pointed 
out : 


It [the liquor traffic] is the citadel of the forces that corrupt 
politics, thwart the will of the people and deliver our country into 
the hands of rapacious class interests. 


Between 1892 and 1896 Prohibitionists were encouraged and 
strengthened by the steady growth of anti-liquor sentiment, as 
indicated by the increasing courage and resoluteness of the church, 
by the attitude of the railroads and other employers of labor in 
discriminating against drinking employees and the refusal of 
fraternal orders to admit liquor sellers to membership. 

Still more they were encouraged by the steadfastness, courage, 
clear vision and the tremendous educational and moral power of 
the party itself. 

It was of incalculable value to the nation that in nearly every 
community there were groups of citizens who were advocating 
higher ideals in politics and government and seeking to obtain a 


254 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


nobler citizenship. The Prohibition party was the leading factor 
in emphasizing conscience in politics. The continued activity of 
such a party was in itself an educational force which was elevating 
public sentiment not only upon the liquor question but for better 
government generally. 

Furthermore, numerous local victories were being won. 
Among the Prohibitionists elected to state legislatures in the 
early nineties were: Wendell P. Stafford in Vermont; U. E. 
Mayhew in Massachusetts, two terms; George L. James in Con- 
necticut; W. P. Buffum and George F. Varney in Rhode Island, 
and W. A. Sager in Virginia. Among the Prohibition mayors 
elected were Jethro C. Brock, New Bedford, Massachusetts; 
C. W. McClair, Ogdensburg, New York; Henry Johnston, Wash- 
ington, New Jersey; C. W. Pettit, Norfolk, Virginia; Samuel L. 
Jewett, Haverhill, Massachusetts; William McCarthy, Nashville, 
Tennessee; James Mansel, Williamsport, Pennsylvania; Dr. John 
P. Sherman, Marinette, Wisconsin; T. H. Jones, Wellsville, 
Ohio, and National Chairman Samuel Dickie, Albion, Michigan. 

Besides these there were scores and hundreds elected to the 
lesser local official positions and in some smaller communities the 
entire Prohibition ticket was elected. In Colorado in 1894 seven 
towns elected the straight ticket. 

The importance of some of the lesser offices was not to be 
minimized. One example of the use of even a coroner’s position 
to drive home a lesson on the liquor question was the remarkable 
verdict of Coroner George W. Norman, a Prohibitionist who 
had been elected coroner of Gibson County, Indiana. 

That county bordered on Illinois and a citizen crossed the 
Wabash River to Mt. Carmel, Illinois, became intoxicated and 
on his way home, while walking on the railroad track, was killed 
by atrain. The coroner’s verdict said: 


My judgment is that if decedent had not been drunk, he would 
not have been killed; that if there had been no saloons to tempt him, 
he would not have been drunk; that if the laws of Illinois had not 
authorized and her citizens permitted the public sale of intoxicating 
liquors, decedent would not have been enticed on his way home by 
said saloons; that if the citizens of Illinois had not valued the 
revenue to be derived from the saloon business more than they value 
the lives of the victims of such business, they would not have legal- 
ized the said saloons; and that the voters and legislators of the 
said State of Illinois who, for the sake of the revenue to be derived 
therefrom, authorized the said saloons to tempt the decedent, and 
make him drunk, and turn him loose to stumble into another state, 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 255 


there to meet a violent death while too drunk to help himself, are 
equally guilty with the said saloon-keepers in the matter of the 
decedent’s death, and ought to be holden for it; and I accordingly 
return this my verdict. 


In the election of 1893 all but one of the states voting increased 
the vote over 1891. In 1894 some states increased, a few de- 
creased and most held their previous records, notwithstanding 
the extremely unsettled conditions of the period of hard times, 
and that in the Congressional elections there was another political 
turnover. 


BROAD GAUGE VERSUS SINGLE ISSUE 


Ever since the beginning of the populistic radical wave which 
started to sweep over the country in 1890 there had been a dif- 
ference of opinion within the party ranks as to whether the party 
should adopt a broad gauge platform, taking a definite position 
on many issues, or whether it should confine itself chiefly to the 
overwhelming single issue of prohibition. 

In several states, especially in the West, between I8o1 and 
1895, the state platforms were tending to become populistic and 
were including some proposals which were regarded by a con- 
siderable fraction of the voters as radical and unsound. It was 
difficult to win voters to support a party a portion of whose plat- 
form they did not approve. 7 

The argument of those who in earlier years had advocated a 
broad platform was that the objective of a political party is to 
obtain control of the governmental affairs of the nation. A party 
to be placed in power must obtain the confidence of the people 
that it can deal with the various problems of government which 
will confront it when it comes into power. 

The policy of the Prohibition party had been to emphasize the 
prohibition issue as the most important one and in addition in all 
the campaigns but one it had proposed a constructive and pro- 
gressive but not radical program on other questions, Viewed 
from the perspective of later years the party presented a remark- 
ably statesmanlike series of platforms. 

But in the midst of the radical wave in the early nineties there 
were some broad gaugers who went to extremes and insisted that 
the party take a radical position on almost every measure under 
discussion, that it should take the position that the particular 
broad gauger thought was right on the question. 

The crisis was precipitated by the free silver issue which had 


256 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


been thrust forward by the Populists and in 1896 was championed 
by the Democrats and Populists. The free coinage of silver at 
the ratio of sixteen to one, providing for an increase in the 
quantity of money in circulation, was ardently advocated by many 
people of the debt-suffering West as the remedy for their eco- 
nomic ills. The silver movement however represented far more 
than merely free coinage. It was a complex of pent-up class 
feelings against the excessive power of great wealth. Not since 
the Civil War had political feeling been so intense as it was in 
1806. 

For several months before the Prohibition convention, almost 
every week the Prohibition papers contained vigorous articles by 
different leaders debating whether the platform should be broad 
gauge or narrow gauge. 

Those advocating the single issue said that the great purpose 
of the Prohibition party was to achieve prohibition. It was 
shown that no party could successfully require fealty at the same 
time to two or more radical or divisive issues. A majority of 
the people might believe in prohibition but a party could not 
expect to win if it required all those who favored prohibition to 
also commit themselves, for example, to free trade and free 
silver. The gold standard men and the protectionists would be 
repelled by such a platform. 

It was also pointed out that great divisive questions are settled 
one at a time and historical precedent was cited that when the 
Republican party was organized, its platform of 1856 contained 
only one issue. It aimed to secure a union of all those opposed 
to the extension of slavery, and to do that had dropped all other 
divisive issues including prohibition, which the new Republican 
party had been supporting in several states, and made opposition 
to the extension of slavery its one basis of union. 

Most of the narrow gaugers, so called, did not intend to 
confine the platform to prohibition alone, but they did want to 
keep out all divisive questions, and incorporate in the platform 
only those proposals upon which there was substantial agreement. 


THE CONVENTION OF 1896 


The convention of 1896 met at Pittsburgh the last day of 
May. From the beginning there was an exciting contest between 
the two factions. A. A. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, a narrow 
gauger, was chosen Temporary Chairman. The broad gauge 
side won in the selection of a Permanent Chairman, Oliver W. 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 257 


Stewart, of Illinois, then a young man of twenty-nine, who there 
made a reputation for his fairness and ability as a presiding 
officer. 

Most intense interest centered on the platform. 

The Resolutions Committee reported a broad platform and a 
number of planks were adopted plank by plank by the convention. 
But when the financial plank was reached free silver was voted 
down, showing that although a majority favored a broad plat- 
form, a majority did not favor a proposal which endangered the 
soundness of our financial system. 

After the defeat of the free silver plank, Robert H. Patton, a 
lawyer of Springfield, Illinois, who was a member of the law firm 
which was the successor of Lincoln’s, offered, as a substitute for 
the report of the Resolutions Committee, a single issue platform, 
which was adopted by a vote of six hundred and fifty to one 
hundred and fifty. Nevertheless, so great was the excitement 
over the free silver issue that some of the broad gauge free silver 
advocates bolted the convention and caused a split in the party. 
They had another convention and organized what was known as 
the National party, nominating C. E. Bentley, of Nebraska, for 
President and J. H. Southgate, of North Carolina, for Vice- 
President. A good many of those who were most vociferous for 
free silver went clear over to the Democratic-Populist nominee, 
William J. Bryan, and the National party polled only 13,969 
votes. | 


PROHIBITION PLATFORM OF 1896 


Preamble. We, the members of the Prohibition Party, in 
National Convention assembled, renewing our acknowledgment of 
allegiance to Almighty God as the rightful Ruler of the Universe, 
lay down the following as our declaration of political purpose. 

The Prohibition Party in National Convention assembled, declares 
its conviction that the manufacture, exportation, importation and 
sale of alcoholic beverages has produced such social, commercial, 
industrial and political wrongs, and is now so threatening the per- 
petuity of all our social and political institutions that the suppression 
of the same by a national party, organized therefor, is the greatest 
object to be accomplished by the voters of our country, and is of 
such importance that it, of right, ought to control the political action 
of all our patriotic citizens until such suppression is accomplished. 

The urgency of this cause demands the union without further 
delay of all citizens who desire the prohibition of the liquor traffic; 
therefore, 


258 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Resolved, That we favor the legal prohibition by state and national 
legislation of the manufacturer, importation, exportation, and inter- 
state transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages; that we declare 
our purpose to organize and unite all the friends of prohibition into 
one party, and in order to accomplish this end we deem it but right 
to leave every Prohibitionist the freedom of his own convictions 
upon all other political questions, and trust our representatives to 
take such action on other political questions as the changes oc- 
casioned by prohibition and the welfare of the whole people shall 
demand. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. The convention made excellent nominations. 
For President, Joshua Levering, of Maryland, and for Vice- 
President, Hale Johnson, of Illinois. 

Mr. Levering was a highly respected business man of Baltimore, 
a philanthropist in the highest sense of the term, and was perhaps 
the best known Baptist layman in the country. For years he had 
been Vice-President of the Southern Baptist Convention, repre- 
senting a constituency of two million people. He was one of the 
organizers of the American Baptist Educational Society and had 
been its treasurer for six years. He was Vice-President of the 
American Baptist Publication Society and President of the Board 
of Trustees of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at 
Louisville. He had served for seven years as President of the 
Young Men’s Christian Association of Baltimore. 

He had always taken a vital personal interest in various church 
and charitable enterprises. 

He and his brothers were said to conduct the largest coffee 
business in the country outside of New York. The leading busi- 
ness men of Baltimore testified in the highest terms as to the 
unbounded respect with which he was regarded in his own city. 

His purity of character, his ability as a merchant and business 
man, his broad vision and devotion to principle made him re- 
garded by all good citizens as one who would grace the presi- 
dential chair. He was fifty years of age, in the prime of life, 
and made an active campaign. 

For Vice-President. Hale Johnson, the nominee for Vice- 
President, was one of the foremost citizens of Illinois. He was 
a man who dignified and ennobled the term citizen. For years 
he had been fulfilling his responsibilities of citizenship and had 
been seeking to lift American citizenship to a higher plane. 

At sixteen’ he had enlisted in the Union army. Later he was 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 259 


admitted to the bar and became one of the most prominent 
lawyers in southern Illinois. He was noted for his fearlessness 
in fighting corruption and evil and for his honesty in advocating 
righteousness in government. 

In his earlier years he had campaigned for the Republican 
party. In 1884 he was a delegate to the Republican state conven- 
tion and sought to get the party to declare in favor of submitting 
a prohibitory constitutional amendment to the people. After 
the convention refused to favor submission, he left that party, 
although at that time he was prominently mentioned as its prob- 
able candidate for Congress. 

He identified himself with the Prohibition party and was the 
candidate for Attorney-General in 1884. In April, 1896, he was 
nominated for Governor of Illinois and in May he was promoted 
to be the nominee for Vice-President. Later he served as State 
Chairman of the Prohibition party and was one of its ablest and 
most respected advocates. 

In the campaign both Levering and Johnson traveled exten- 
sively and wherever they were heard the party was strengthened. 

Two factors proved disastrous. One was that the free silver 
question became the supreme, single divisive issue for settlement 
in the election in the most complete degree that any issue ever 
achieved priority since the Civil War. 

The other factor was that Prohibitionists became discouraged 
and disheartened because of the split. Looking at the matter 
calmly they should not have become so because each of the parties 
split in that campaign. A wing of Republicans split off and 
became Silver Republicans and there was a split from the Demo- 
crats known as the Gold Democratic party. 

It was the fashion that year to split but it hurt the Prohibition 
party more because it was smaller and could not afford to lose 
the votes and it was disheartening that the advocates of this 
mighty cause should become divided because of an extraneous 
issue, 

Notwithstanding that the vote was cut almost exactly in half 
and that numerous obituaries of the party appeared in the papers, 
the irrepressible, “never-say-die”’ spirit of the party manifested 
itself and at a conference held three weeks after the election, at 
Poughkeepsie, called by William W. Smith, who had just been 
the candidate for Governor in New York, a new start was made. 

That meeting of one hundred and seventy leading Prohibition- 
ists of the Empire State was a turning-point in the history of the 
party and has scarcely been paralleled in the political history of 


260 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the country as an exhibition of resolute spirit, unconquerable will 
and tremendous moral earnestness. Strong men with deep emo- 
tion reconsecrated their lives to the great cause. 

Twelve thousand dollars was raised in twelve minutes to renew 
the battle. Said National Chairman Dickie: 


The outlook is always bright for the thing that is right. Convince 
me that the Prohibition party will never win a victory—even were I 
convinced that prohibition itself would never become a fact—I 
would still lift up my right hand to Heaven and promise my God 
that I would never cast a ballot for any political party that showed 
either fear or favor to the liquor traffic. 


The next year the party made a decided comeback. In Penn- 
sylvania there was polled by far the largest vote ever received in 
any state when Silas C. Swallow received over 118,000 votes for 
State Treasurer. In 1898 as candidate for Governor he increased 
the vote to nearly 133,000. He made two red-hot campaigns 
against the notoriously corrupt Quay political machine. 

The same year, 1898, Frank S. Regan, of Rockford, Illinois, 
was elected to the Illinois Legislature and exerted a remarkable 
influence in that body. 

There was quite a change in the personnel of the party after 
1896, as compared with that before. The Populist element and 
those who were impatient for an early victory had gone, although 
a number of those who left in 1896 subsequently returned. Then 
too a number of the early pioneers had died. James Black passed 
away in 1893, Neal Dow in 1897, and Miss Willard in 1808. 

The ownership of the leading organ of the party was changed. 
The Voice, which since 1884 had been published by Funk and 
Wagnalls in New York, was purchased in 1899 by Samuel Dickie 
and John G. Woolley and moved to Chicago, and combined with 
the Chicago Lever under the name of The New Voice. 

As a result of this there was also a change in the National 
Chairmanship, Dr. Dickie resigning with the intention of giving 
more attention to the paper. For twelve years, since the death of 
John B. Finch in 1887, Samuel Dickie had been National Chair- 
man of the party. He was a man who would have been a tower 
of strength to any movement. He was unsurpassed as a logician. 
He participated in many debates and on such occasions the Pro- 
hibitionists attended with supreme confidence and pride in the 
ability of their champion. Both as an executive officer and as a 
convincing speaker he was without a superior. During his chair- 
manship he spoke in every city in the country of over 10,000 
population and in many smaller places. He was one of the most 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 261 


prominent laymen of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Subse- 
quently he served for twenty years as president of Albion College, 
the leading denominational college of Michigan, but always found 
time to serve the cause when called upon to do so at critical 
periods. He died November 5, 1925. 

Before completing the history of the nineties several shorter 
chapters will be devoted to: 

1. The Voice of the Churches. By the early nineties the 
churches had taken remarkably advanced positions. 

2. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Politi- 
cal Messages of Miss Willard. 

3. The Dispensary System, or state monopoly system, the 
trial of which began in that period. 


THE LITERATURE OF THE NINETIES 


Cyclopedia and Year Books. 


FUNK AND WacGnaLits—Cyclopedia of Temperance and Pro- 
hibition, 1891, 671 pp. The leading reference work thus 
far published. 

Prohibition National Committee—Prohibition Party Campaign - 
Text-Book, 1892, 96 pp.; also, Prohibition Party Cam- 
paign Text-Book, 1896, 96 pp. Both of these text-books 
contain able short articles. 

COPELAND, WiLBuR F’.—Handbook of Prohibition Facts, 1892, - 


128 pp. 

Watpron, Georce B.—The Prohibition Handbook, 1806, 
158 pp. 
Both handbooks are excellent. 

Economic. 

Hopkins, A. A.—Wealth and Waste, 1895, revised edition, 
IQIO, 274 pp. 

FERNALD, JAMES C.—The Economics of Prohibition, 1890, 


515 pp. 
PATTEN, “cet N.—The Economic Basis of Prohibition, 
Annals of the American Academy, II, 59, 1892. 
Hurcuins, E. A.—The Economics of Prohibition (A Study 
| of lowa), reprinted from Report of National Ternperance 
Convention, 1891 (pamphlet). 
U. S. Commissioner of Labor, 12th Annual Report—Economic 
Aspects of the Liquor Problem, 1808. 





262 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 26th Annual Re- 
port—Relation of the Liquor Traffic to Pauperism, In- 
sanity and Crime, 1895, 416 pp. 

Banks, Louis A.—The Saloon Keeper’s Ledger, 1895, 129 pp. 

KoreEN, JoHN—Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem, 1899, 


322 pp. 


Historical and Biographical. 


Dow, NEAt—Reminiscences, 1898, 769 pp. 

LaTHRAP, Mrs. Mary T.—Poems and Written Addresses, 1895, 
430 pp. 

Howe, Epncar P.—Biographical Sketches of Bidwell and Cran- 
fill, with Nominating Speeches, Platform and Bidwell’s 
Letter of Acceptance, 1892. 

Biacx, JAMEsS—History of the Prohibition Party, read at the 
World’s Temperance Congress, 1893, 22 pp. 

CALE, CHARLES A.—Where Are We At? or, The Origin and 
Progress of the Temperance Reform, 1893, 69 pp. 


Addresses. 


Solid Shot, Facts and Arguments on the Liquor Traffic; Speeches 
by M. V. B. Bennett; R. S. Thompson; Wilber Colvin; 
M. J. Fanning; John B. Finch; John P. St. John, and 
A. B, Leonard, 1890, 240 pp. 

WooLLey, JOHN G.—Seed, Number One Hard, 1893, 149 pp. 

Civilization by Faith, 1899, 136 pp. 

linen Owens] GOO 7s), 

The Christian Citizen, 2 vols., 1900, 254 and 272 pp. 

Metcatr, Henry B.—The Duty of the Hour, an address in 
accepting the nomination of the Prohibition Party for 
Governor of Rhode Island, 1894, 22 pp. 








General Temperance. 


National Temperance Congress, 1890. Proceedings, 406 pp. 
Note Address by John Bascom. 

National Temperance Congress, 1891. Note Address by Walter 
B. Hill on the Liquor Traffic and the National Govern- 
ment. 

STEARNS, J. N.—Temperance in All Nations, 1893, 2 vols. 
Report of World’s Temperance Congress at World’s Fair. 

Burns, Dawson—Temperance History, 2 vols., 1891. 


PROHIBITION PARTY IN THE NINETIES 263 


Miscellaneous. 


SITES, CLEMENT M. L.—Centralized Administration of the 
Liquor Laws in the American Commonwealths, 1899, 
162 pp. 

Wines, F. H., and Koren, Jonn—The Liquor Problem in its 
Legislative Aspects, 1897, 419 pp. (Koren, revealed by 
(a: i Government Investigation as later under pay of the 
liquor interests. ) 

ROWNTREE and SHERWELL—The Temperance Problem and So- 
cial Reform, 1899, 784 pp. English supporter of state 
monopoly system. 


The leading national Prohibition papers were The Voice, Hate 


T808, and The New Voice, 1899-1906. 

Among the leading state Prohibition papers of this period were: 
"New York, The Facts of Elmira, of which P. J. Bull was 
editor, A. ee Hopkins a contributing editor and Francis 
E. Baldwin a prominent supporter; The Defender of New 
York City, edited by Henry W. Wilbur; Pennsylvania, 
The True Reform, edited by Tallie Morgan; Connecticut, 
The New England Home, founded in 1886 and edited by 
Allen B. Lincoln; New Jersey, New Jersey Gazette, edited 
by Dr. J. B. Graw and later by Dr. Grafton E. Day and 
others; Ohio, The New Era, 1885-1896, edited by R. S. 
Thompson; The Cornerstone, 1897-1902, edited by J. J. 
Ashenhurst; Indiana, The Patriot Phalanx, edited by 
William F. Clark; Illinois, The Lever, edited by James 
Lamont, and at various times by Alonzo E. Wilson; Wis- 


consin, The Northwestern Mail, edited by A. A. Miner; , 
Minnesota, Lhe Backbone, edited by George F. Wells for 


about a score of years; Nebraska, The New Republic, 
edited by H. C. Bittenbender ; Oregon, The Searchlight, 
edited by Mrs. E. M. Vandervort; “Maryland, The Balti 
more Advocate, edited by A. H. Eichelberger, and later 
The Baltimore Issue, edited by Edwin Higgins: Tennessee, 


The Harriman Advance, edited by A. iN Hopkins wha 


was succeeded by Wilber Colvin. 


Chapter XV 
THE VOICE OF THE CHURCHES 


By the middle eighties, in the language of John B. Finch, ‘“‘the 
reform had become a part of the religious faith of the nation.” 

In the volume, One Hundred Years of Temperance, published 
in 1885 in celebration of a century of work in behalf of temper- 
ance, one hundred and sixty pages are devoted to a record of the 
progress of the churches on this question. 


THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 


—.. 


/ The evolution in the attitude of the Presbyterian Church, a 
large and conservative body, is characteristic of the general trend 
of most of the Protestant churches. 

Beginning in 1812 the ministers were urged by the General 
Assembly to preach pointedly and solemnly, warning all, especially 
the members of their churches, not only against actual intemper- 
ance but against all those habits and indulgences which may have 
a tendency to produce it. 

In 1827 the Presbyterian Church pledged itself to “cooperate 
in one great national effort to accomplish a universal change in 
the habits and customs of our country.” 

In 1835 the General Assembly declared: “Total abstinence 
from inebriating drinks should be the principle followed by all 
the followers of Jesus.” 

In 1840 it asserted that “the only true principle of temperance 
is total abstinence from everything that will intoxicate.” 

In 1854 it cordially commended prohibition as a system of 
legislation to the support of all ministers and churches and ex- 
pressed the hope that the time was not far distant “when such 
a law should be universally adopted and enforced.” 

In 1855 the General Assembly gave devout thanks to Almighty 
God for the unparalleled success of the temperance cause as evi- 
denced by the action of the legislatures of thirteen states and two 
territories in passing laws prohibiting entirely the traffic in in- 
toxicating beverages. 

It said: 

264 


THE VOICE OF THE CHURCHES 265 


The experience of two hundred years proves that this evil can 
never be removed or effectively resisted while the traffic in intoxi- 
cating liquors is continued, it being necessary, if we would stop the 
effect, to remove the cause. . . . Laws prohibiting the sale of in- 
toxicating drinks can interfere with the right of no man; because 
no man has a right of any name or nature inconsistent with the 
public good, or at war with the welfare of the community; it being 
a well known, universally acknowledged maxim of law that “no 
man has a right to use his own to the injury of his neighbor.” 


At the close of the Civil War the growth of intemperate habits 
resulting from the demoralizing influences of the war was re- 
flected in a renewed declaration for entire abstinence as “‘the only 
sure protection against drunkenness.” 

The same year, 1865, engaging in the traffic was interpreted 
as so palpable a violation of the law of Christian charity to the 
weak as to constitute sufficient ground for exclusion and ex- 
pulsion from the church. This was based upon the teachings of 
the Bible which require visible Christianity in a credible form 
of those who would partake of the ordinances of the church. 

In 1871 it was declared: 


The manufacture, sale and use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage, 
in the belief of the General Assembly, is contrary to the spirit of 
God’s word and wholly inconsistent with the claims of Christian 
duty. Those who knowingly rent their premises for the traffic, or 
indorse licenses which legalize it, are responsible as accomplices in 
the guilt of the same. 


In several succeeding Assemblies these declarations were re- 
affirmed. In 1881 a Permanent Committee on Temperance was 
established and subsequently its support was frequently urged. 

In 1883 the General Assembly said: 


In view of the evils wrought by this scourge of our race the 
Assembly would hail with acclamations of joy and thanksgiving the 
utter extermination of the traffic in intoxicating liquors as a beverage 
by the power of Christian conscience, public opinion and the strong 
arm of the civil law. 


In 1885 it said: 


The entire extinction of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating 
liquors as a beverage is the goal to which the Assembly looks 
forward and for the accomplishment of which it expects the earnest, 
united, determined and persistent labor of all its ministers and people 
in connection with the religious and sober citizens of our common 
country. 


266 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


In addition to the increasingly strong declarations the Assembly 
also emphasized contemporaneous aspects of the question. In 
1873 it advocated prohibition in the territories. In 1880 it com- 
mended Mrs, Hayes for her temperance example in the White 
House, In 1884 it advocated the enactment of scientific temper+ 
ance instruction laws. In 1888 it protested against so-called 
Christian nations furnishing deadly intoxicants to heathen lands, 
especially against the protection of such awful traffic by treaty 
stipulations. In 1899 it protested against the throwing open of 
our new possessions to the debauching traffic, in 1900 it urged 
the suppression of the army canteen, and in 1903 it memorialized 
Congress to prevent the issuance of tax receipts by the federal 
Government in states and communities where prohibitory legis- 
ation had been enacted. 
olitical action was first referred to in 1888, again in 1890 
and in 1892 the General Assembly recognized the political party 
aspect by declaring: 







While it is not the province of the church to dictate to any man 
how he shall vote, no political party has the right to expect the 
| support of Christian men so long as that party stands committed to 
the license policy or refuses to put itself on record against the saloon. 


This was reaffirmed in 1894 and 1900. 

It several times declared vehemently against the license system 
| and in 1913 advocated a prohibitory amendment to the Federal 
Constitution, 


THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 


The Methodist Episcopal Church, the largest Protestant de- 
nomination, has long been one of the most aggressive churches 
on this question. One_of i 
1892: | 
——— 

(4) Attitude toward the Traffic—We reiterate the language of 
the Episcopal Address of 1888: “The liquor traffic is so pernicious 
in all its bearings, so inimical to the interests of honest trade, so 
repugnant to the moral sense, so injurious to the peace and order 
of society, so hurtful to the home, to the church and to the body 
politic and so utterly antagonistic to all that is precious in life, 
that the only proper attitude toward it, for Christians, is that of 
relentless hostility. It can never be legalized without sin.” 

We concur in the Episcopal Address of 1892, where it is de- 
clared: “In our judgment the saloon is an unmixed evil, full of 
diabolism, a disgrace to our civilization, the chief corruptor of 


THE VOICE OF THE CHURCHES 267 


political action and a continual menace to the order of society and 
the peace and purity of our homes.” 

Believing as we do that the traffic in intoxicating beverages sus- 
tains the relation of an efficient cause to the vice of intemperance, 
we hold that no member of the Methodis i adel 
or protection-of that-trafitt—We declare before oil the wid tins 
the Church-ofGot-ougit to be known always and everywhere as 
the relentless and uncompromising foe of the ungodly business, and 
that it is the duty of every Christian to wage ceaseless warfare 
against it. 

(5) Attitude toward Trafficker and his Supporters—We em- 
phatically declare that men engaged in the manufacture and sale 
of alcoholic beverages ought not to receive the commercial patronage 
of Christian people, nor should those who either directly or in- 
directly sustain the ungodly traffic receive the suffrages of Christian 
men. 

(6) The License System—License laws are the liquor traffic’s 
strongest bulwark of defense. They are wrong in principle and 
impotent for good. We are unalterably opposed to the enactment 
of laws that propose by license, taxing or otherwise to regulate the 
drink traffic, because they provide for its continuance and afford no 
protection against its ravages. We will accept no compromises, 
but demand the unconditional surrender of the rebellious business, 

(8) Political Action—We recommend all members of the 
Methodist Episcopal CRurch, who enjoy the elective franchise, to 
so use that solemn trust as to promote the rescue of our country 
from the guilt and dishonor which have been brought upon it by 
a criminal complicity with the liquor traffic. 

We do not presume to dictate the political conduct of our people, 
but we do record our deliberate judgment that no political party 
has a right to expect, nor ought it to receive, the support of Christian 
men so long as it stands committed to the license policy, or refuses 
to put itself on record in an attitude of open hostility to the saloon. 


BAPTISTS 


The Baptist Church, through the American Baptist Home 
Mission Society in 1890, resolved: 


That we declare ourselves among its [the liquor traffic’s] most 
pronounced and relentless foes, believing that it has no defensible 
right to exist, and that it can never be reformed ; and that it stands 
condemned by its unrighteous fruits as a thing unchristian, un- 
American and perilous utterly to every interest of life. 

That we stand pledged by every legitimate means to work and 





268 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


pray and vote for the absolute abolition and overthrow of the 
iniquitous traffic in State and Nation. 


SOUTHERN BAPTISTS 


In 1900 the Southern Baptist Convention resolved: 


In brief we favor prohibition for the nation and the state and total 
abstinence for the individual, and we do believe that no Christian 
citizen should ever cast a ballot for any man, measure or platform 
that is opposed to the annihilation of the liquor traffic. 


THE SCHRISTIAN (CHURCH 


The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) with a member- 
ship in 1908 of 1,300,000 said that year: 


We adopt as the principles of the Church of Jesus Christ on the 
temperance question: First, total abstinence for the individual; 
second, prohibition for the state and nation; third, a political party 
in power committed to this policy of state and national prohibition 
and to the enforcement of law. 


THE) CATHOLIC’ CHURCH 


In 1885 the Catholic Third Plenary Council of Baltimore 
strongly condemned intemperance, among other things saying : 


We call upon all pastors to induce any of their flocks who may be 
engaged in the sale of liquors to abandon as soon as they can the 
dangerous traffic and to embrace a more becoming way of making 
a living. 

In 1887 Pope Leo XIII praised this action and commended 
the work of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union. The Pope 
wrote: 


We have rejoiced to learn with what energy and zeal, by means 
of various excellent associations and especially through the Catholic 
Total Abstinence Union, you combat the destructive vice of in- 
temperance. For it is well known to us how ruinous, how de- 
plorable, is the injury, both to faith and to morals, that is to be 
feared from intemperance in drink, nor can we sufficiently praise 
the prelates of the United States who recently in the Plenary Council 
of Baltimore, with weightiest words condemned this abuse, declaring 
it to be a perpetual incentive to sin and a fruitful root of all evils, 
plunging the families of the intemperate into direst ruin, and 
dragging numberless souls down to everlasting perdition: declaring, 


THE VOICE OF THE CHURCHES 269 


moreover, that the faithful who yield to this vice of intemperance 
become thereby a scandal to non-Catholics, and a great hindrance 
to the propagation of the true religion. 

Hence we esteem worthy of all commendation the noble resolve 
of your pious associations by which they pledge to abstain totally 
from every kind of intoxicating drink. . . . Let pastors, therefore, 
do their best to drive the plague of intemperance from the fold of 
Christ by assiduous preaching and exhortation, and to shine before 
all as models of abstinence, that so many calamities with which this 
vice threatens both Church and State, may, by their strenuous 
endeavors, be averted. 


In 1893 a great congress of the Catholic laity held in Chicago 
declared : 


We urge Catholics everywhere to get out and keep out of the 
saloon business. 


In 1894 Bishop Watterson of the Columbus, Ohio, diocese 
issued a rule that: 


No one who is engaged as principal or agent in the manufacture 
or sale of intoxicating liquors can be admitted to membership in 
any Catholic society in this diocese. 


This was approved by the Papal Delegate to the United States 
who said: 


If it appears to cause temporal loss at present to some, it should 
be borne patiently for the spiritual good of many and for the honor 
of our Catholic Church. 


The Catholic Total Abstinence Union which was organized in 
1872 has been active in behalf of total abstinence down to the 
present time. In 1895 a membership of 65,900 was reported in 
864 societies. In later years the Catholic Prohibition League, the 
Association of Catholics Favoring Prohibition, and the Catholic 
Clergy Prohibition League did valuable service. The latter was 
headed by the Rev. Father George Zurcher who for some years 
published a monthly paper, Catholics and Prohibition, and at the 
present time edits The Father Mathew Man. 


THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CHURCHES 


An analysis of the declarations of the churches, of which the 
above are extracts from those churches containing a membership 
of a million or more reveals the following: 

I. The highest authority in the Catholic Church earnestly 


270 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


commended total abstinence and urged the pastors to do their best 
to drive out the plague of intemperance, emphasizing assiduous 
preaching, exhortation and strenuous endeavors, Furthermore, 
the highest authority in the Catholic Church in this country 
favored the abandonment of the traffic by all Catholics. 

2. The Protestant churches by the early nineties had come 
to a general agreement upon the following principles: 

A. Total abstinence for the individual. 

B. Refusal of fellowship to those engaged in the traffic in any 
form. 

C. A church offense to rent property for saloon purposes or in 
any way reap a profit therefrom. 

D. Opposition to the license system. “License, high or low, is 
vicious in principle and powerless as a remedy.” “It can never 
be legalized without sin.” 

EK. Most churches were outspoken for prohibition. Of the 

twenty-four larger Protestant denominations twenty aggressively 
supported prohibition. Most declared for the entire extinction 
and annihilation of the traffc—for both law and its vigorous 
enforcement. A number of the churches gave reasons setting 
forth some of the social and moral reasons for prohibition. 
FF. Recognition of party government. A number of the 
churches, recognizing that our government is a government by 
parties, declared that a political party should not receive the sup- 
port of Christian voters if it refused to put itself on record in an 
attitude of open hostility to the saloon. 

G. The responsibility of the Christian citizen for the use of 
the ballot was strongly emphasized. The ballot was recognized 
to be a solemn trust to be used for the promotion of the welfare 
of our country. 

Emphasis upon the two principles last mentioned can be’ illus- 
trated by further quotations. 

The United Presbyterian Church in a succession of resolutions 
emphasized the duty of Christian citizens in the use of the ballot. 
In 1887 it said: 


We regard the traffic as an evil which can never be removed with- 
out political action and we regard its entire prohibition as the most 
ressing political question of the times; and it therefore becomes our 
uty as Christian citizens, in the careful and prayerful use of the 
allot, to meet the question directly. 














In 1891 the party phase was faced when the United Presby- 
erian Church declared: 


THE VOICE OF THE CHURCHES 2 





Partisan friendship for the saloon must be accepted as hostility 
io the church, the home and all that is valuable to society. No party 
is worthy of the support of Christian men that fails to antagonize 
the saloon. 


And in 1894 the same church declared: 


1. We regard the liquor traffic as the overshadowing curse of this 
nation; an enemy to the peace, purity and prosperity of the home, 
the church and the State. To license this traffic is a sin against God 
and a crime against humanity. Being morally wrong it can never be 
made legally right. We believe that the time has fully come when 
Christians should cease to be indifferent and should unite their 
efforts, regardless of previous party affiliations, for its complete 
suppression. 

2. In our judgment no Christian can be held innocent of wrong- } 
doing, who, when a moral question is at issue, so votes as to be 
committed against the side of righteousness. 


The National Congregational Council, a conservative body on 
this question, in 1892 adopted resolutions against the license 
system and it also recognized the fact of party government when 
it adjured Christians rightly to use parties. It said: 


Parties seem to be necessary to the attaining of common ends, but 
Christians should use the party to do good and not let the party use 
them to do evil. They must not permit party policy to draw them 
into the support of bad measures or bad men. They should sooner 
see their party fail to elect than see it elect vile men. We would 
not dictate as to any man’s party affiliations. But every man should 
keep himself so far independent that he can make his ballot effective 
for righteousness, temperance and humanity. 


A nunaber_of the subordinate bodies of the different denomi- Wa 


This wes-esp ot —sonre—of thei 
confererfces. Likewise a number of the smaller denominations 
such as the Free Methodists, Wesleyan Methodists and Methodist 
Protestants took advanced ground. 

A few of the more advanced declarations with regard to party 
government, the responsibilities of the voters and the civic duty 
of the pulpit follow: 

In March, 1891, the New Jersey Conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church resolved : 






Since our church brands all license as a sin the proper attitude of 
Christians toward the whole license system is one of uncom- 
promising opposition. 

While we do not advise the taking of partisan politics into the 


272 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


pulpit, yet on this most important of all political issues we call upon 
our ministers to pronounce most emphatically against any party 
that, in its platform or legislative acts, provides by license or other- 
wise for the continuance of the drink traffic and affords no pro- 
tection against its ravages. 

Ve emphatically declare ourselves in favor of that political party, 
of whatever name or title, that will incorporate in the party platform 
the principle of prohibition of the liquor traffic, and that we will not 
cast our votes for any man, however solemn his pledges to aid the 
cause of temperance, who will permit himself to be a candidate for 
office ina party whose platform favors the liquor traffic by license or 

ther methods of regulation, but here and now we solemnly record 
bik votes for prohibition pure and simple. 


The above resolutions were adopted by a rising vote, all but 
four or five of the members of the conference voting in favor and 
none against them. 

Both the above and the following resolutions reflect how un- 
dependable are the pledges of so-called good men in bad parties. 
Long experience had demonstrated that the individual office- 
holder in a pro-liquor party was unable to be effective for 
prohibition. 


In the fall of 1891 the Rock River Conference of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, embracing Northern Illinois and 
including the Ciiy oF Chiciggresslved?= 37 = a 
That we emphatically declare ourselves in favor of that political 
party of whatever name or title that will incorporate in its party 
platform the principle of prohibition of the liquor traffic and that we 
will not cast our vote for any man, however solemn his pledges to 
aid the cause of temperance, who will permit himself to be a can- 


didate for office in a party whose platform favors the liquor interest 
by license or other methods of regulation. 








This resolution was readopted the following year, 1892. 

In April, 1892, the New England Conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, at its meeting in Boston, delivered the follow- 
ing utterance: 


We demand the suppression of the saloon. There are Christian 
voters enough to dig the grave and bury out of sight forever the 
political leaders, or parties even, who will protect the liquor traffic. 
We believe that for the Christian voter there can be no greater 
issue at any election than the suppression of the saloon. We are 
more anxious for the welfare of our homes, the safety of our nation 
and the triumph of the church than we are for the success of any 
political party or the election of any politicians to office. Therefore 


THE VOICE OF THE CHURCHES 273 


we shall vote as we pray, against all men’and measures which look 
to the protection or existence of the saloon. 

Moreover, since the conditions of society and governmental Tife 
are so nearly related to, and dependent upon, political action, and 
since, according to testimony from many sources, the two chief 
political parties of the country are in practical complicity with the 
liquor traffic, and the allegation is sustained by the fact that they 
are largely dependent upon the liquor vote, that rumsellers occupy 


positions of influence in their councils and caucuses, and that they 


persistently refuse to countenance the legal prohibition of the traffic ; 
therefore 

Resolved, That, as Christian ministers and citizens, we repudiate 
those parties as false to a great principle of political morality and 
unworthy of the votes of those who pray to God for the extinction 
of the legalized liquor traffic, and we declare ourselves unalterably 


opposed to all political parties that in any way protect the liquor 


system. 


A still more advanced position was taken by at least two 
other Methodist Conferences, the Central Pennsylvania and the 


Wyoming. In April, 1893, ryoming Conference, covering 
an important area imMorthern Pennsylvania and central and 


southern New York, resolved: 


Believing that the legalized liquor traffic is the greatest curse to the 
church and country, and 

Believing that the two chief political parties of the nation are in 
practical league with the saloon, these parties having repeatedly 
refused to make the present license system illegal, and 

Believing that a vote for license is a vote for sin, therefore in the 
language of the Central Pennsylvania Conference: 

Kesolved, That, as Christian preachers and citizens we repudiate 
these parties as false to political morality and unworthy the votes 
of those who pray to God for the suppression of the liquor traffic: 
and we hereby covenant with God and Christian people never to 
vote for any political party that favors license or refuses to put 
itself on record as openly opposed to the saloon. 


Thus a new covenant was adopted’ There was beginning to 
be the dawn of a new day with respect to righteousness in politics 

The churches were rapidly responding to the challenge of such 
militant champions of Christian standards in politics as A. B. 
Leonard, C. H. Payne, J. G. Evans, Charles F. Deems, William 
H. Boole, Charles A. Crane, and many others among the min- 
isters, and such men as Samuel Dickie and John G. Woolley 
among the laymen. In the nineties John G. Woolley, a brand 
recently plucked from the burning, was bearing stirring messages 








274 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


to the church which were awakening conscience and spreading 
conviction. The titles alone of some of his addresses indicate 
the emphasis—‘Christian Politics,’ “Christian Citizenship,” 
“Political Sanctification,’ “The Power of the Pulpit,” “The 
Honor of the Church,” “Civilization by Faith,’ “Church Reso- 
lutions versus Saloon Resolution.” 

But the ideal of Christianity applied in politics was not yet to 
be attained. Noble resolutions formed on the mountain-top of 
spiritual experience were forgotten in the valley of campaign 
political pressures. Small politicians, in the church and out of 
it, conspired to minify the effect of the splendid declarations. 
That this was the case is reflected by a resolution of the Genesee 
Methodist Conference : 


We deprecate and resent the effort of politicians of any phase 
of political belief who would minify the utterances of the highest 
authority of the church to harmonize with their predilections. 


Pressure was brought to bear against the preachers of political 
righteousness and more than once a consecrated minister, faithful 
to his vision, had to suffer by reason of being relegated to a 


fer ‘church: 

aie into effect the high purpose of the declarations was 
further obstructed by the rise in the nineties of the 1-Saloon 
League, working Chicly-WHMi- MeCN Whidh taint 
it was not necessary for voters to leave their old parties and held 
out the tempting prospect of the seemingly easier method of omni- 
partisanism., Its method was eagerly grasped at by those groups 
who were unwilling to leave their old parties and wanted a salve 
for their consciences which had been stirred by the challenge to 
political righteousness. 

There was a decided reaction in the church resolutions. En- 
thusiasm even for the principle of prohibition waned. Some of 
the denominations, notably one where the League obtained a 
strong foothold, deteriorated so far that their political horizon 
was limited chiefly to local option and individual ‘‘good men” 

ndidates of unregenerated parties. This was illustrated in the 
fcecionaey resolutions adopted by the Methodist Episcopal 

qurch-in 1908." 

The failure of the church to live up to its high declarations 
was followed by, and was largely the cause of, a deplorable slump 
in Christian politics. The backsliding was evidenced not only in 
continued and enhanced political corruption and indifference to 
high standards in politics but it weakened the spiritual power of 

1 See infra, Chapter XXI, p. 393. 


THE VOICE OF THE CHURCHES 275 


the church itself whose political and social vision had become 
dimmed. 

However, declarations of the character of those above quoted 
did not cease and were not by any means confined to the nineties. 
There were some who kept the vision and there were many strong 
declarations through the years. In 1908 the General Conference 
of the United Brethren Church said: 


We declare openly our unending opposition to any and every 
system devised for the mere regulation of the beverage liquor traffic, 
and avow ourselves in favor of the total overthrow of such 
iniquitous traffic. We urge our people not to support any man or 
party that directly or indirectly favors the liquor interests; and 
furthermore we declare, by every intuition of the heart, by every 
fact and law of ethics, by every principle of a representative govern- 
ment, and by every counsel of the word and spirit of God, that no 
Christian has a moral right to affiliate with a political party which is 
antagonistic to or silent concerning the issue of the liquor traffic. 


The General Conference of the Free Methodist Church de- 
clared: 


We believe we should not only support the principle of Prohibi- 
tion but the party that is the chief exponent of that principle. To 
advocate the principle of Prohibition without a party to carry it into 
force is like having a soul without a body in which it can dwell. 


Following 1913 the church bodies spoke with renewed zeal and 
almost with one voice for national constitutional prohibition. 

No history of prohibition in the United States would be ade- 
quate which does not give large credit to the church temperance 
boards for their splendid service which continued through many 
years. Among the more active were the Presbyterian Temper- 
ance Board, of which Dr. Charles Scanlon has been the executive 
head since 1904; the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohi- 
bition and Public Morals which has been especially active since 
tg1o under the leadership of Dr. Clarence True Wilson and 
Mr. Deets Pickett; and the American Temperance Board of the 
Disciples of Christ of which in later years the Rev. Milo J. 
Smith has been the General Secretary. All of these for many 
years maintained executives giving their whole time to the work. 
A number of the other denominations had permanent temper- 
ance boards, commissions or committees which helped to carry on 
an educational program for temperance and prohibition. : 

Bibliographical Note—The more important church declarations 
may be found in the contemporary Prohibition Vear Books and 
fland Books. The resolutions in full for the different years may 
be found in the official minutes of the various church bodies. 








Chapter XVI 


THE WOMAN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION: THE 
POLITICAL MESSAGES OF FRANCES E. WILLARD 


In an earlier chapter covering the decade of the seventies refer- 
ence has been made to the great Woman’s Crusade and the 
founding of the national Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 
in 1874. 

Having evolved from the Woman’s Crusade, which was largely 
a moral suasion movement, the Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union in its earlier years paid but little attention to the political 
aspects of the liquor question. 

However, even the first national convention in 1874 sensed 
somewhat the political obstacles and adopted a resolution which 
said: 

Much of the evil by which the country is cursed comes from the 
fact that men in power whose duty it is to make and administer the 
laws are either themselves intemperate men or are controlled largely 
by the liquor power. 


It was not until after Frances E. Willard became National 
President in 1879 that the women began to grasp the vital im- 
portance of the political phases of the problem with which they 
were dealing. 

Miss Willard, who has been called the “Uncrowned Queen of 
American Womanhood, ” 1s the only woman in American history 
who has been honored by having her statue placed by a state of 
the Union in Statuary Hall in the N ational Capitol at Washing- 
ton. She is also one of the few women who have been accorded 
a place in the Hall of Fame. Her annual addresses to the national 
conventions of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union were 
comprehensive, masterful and inspiring, and were looked upon 
by many discerning people as comparable to the annual messages 
of the President of the United States to Congress. Her utter- 
ances upon the political aspects of prohibition should be preserved 
and copious extracts are here included. 

It was in 1881 that Miss Willard, while attending the Ninth 


National Temperance Convention at Saratoga Springs, got an 
276 


MESSAGES OF FRANCES E. WILLARD 277 


enlarged vision of political duty. At that convention were as- 
sembled many of the outstanding temperance leaders of the 
country. The dominant personality and central figure was James 
Black. There she listened to what she described as “the keen, 
clear logic of those who declared their conviction that the tem- 
perance question must follow the liquor question into politics.” * 

There she was converted to the Prohibition party, making the 
decision that it was her ‘“‘personal duty and delight to take sides 
for the Prohibition party.” 

From that time forth as long as she lived, in every presidential 
address which she delivered at the national conventions of the 
W. C. T. U. and in innumerable other addresses and articles, this 
matchless leader of an unequaled organization, this ‘““Uncrowned 
Queen of American Womanhood,” continued to hold aloft the 
banner of the Prohibition party. 

At the National Convention of 1881 at Washington, D. C., 
nearly one-third of Miss Willard’s presidential address was de- 
voted to a discussion of the need for a Prohibition party. 

In it she said that she was “profoundly interested in politics 
as the mightiest force on earth except Christianity.” 

She reviewed the improved situation in the southern states, 
which she had recently visited, and urged the need of a new 
party which would wipe out sectionalism. After calling atten- 
tion to the fact that the great objectives of the Republican party 
had been reached and the issues of the Civil War and Recon- 
struction had been settled, she continued: 


But when we name the greatest issue now pending on this, or any, 
continent—the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxi- 
cating liquors as a drink—behold the Republicans of Maine, New 
Hampshire and Vermont vote for, and the Republicans of North 
Carolina, Ohio and Illinois against it, while the Democrats of Kansas 
oppose and of South Carolina favor it! Now, I blame neither party 
for this inconsistency ; it is simply the handwriting on the wall which 
tells that both are weighed in the balance and found wanting. For 
they are formed of men who, while they thought alike and fought 
alike on many great questions, on this greatest of all questions are 
hopelessly divided, and a “house divided against itself cannot stand.” 

In 1863 slavery was the determining factor in American politics. 
In 1881 that final factor is the liquor traffic. Then, while the 
Prohibitionists of Maine marched to the front with General Neal 
Dow, the Germans were proud “‘to fight mit Sigel!” but today the 
bayonets of those two champions and their followers no longer 
point one way. Sigel approved the brewers’ Sabbath-breaking 

1 Frances E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years, p. 375. 


278 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


demonstration at Newark and General Dow is the chief defender 
of a law which shuts such men up in jail. John B. Gough and 
Philip Best, the brewer, voted the self-same ticket, so did Governor 
St. John of Kansas and Boss Hesing, editor of the Staats Zeitung 
of Chicago. But it is morally impossible that they should do so now. 

The Republican party in Ohio and Illinois can only win through 
German votes. Hence we behold legislatures as they bow the knee, 
and municipal authorities as they grovel in the dust, crying with 
one accord, “Great is Gambrinus of the Teutonians.” ahagens 

But “don’t take temperance into politics” is the cry of sundry 
surface thinkers. I wish every one would read Miss Victor’s pam- 
phlet on that question.2 It will be a discovery to some that since 
Beer is already in the political arena shaking its fists, Temperance 
must go forth to the encounter or fail to exhibit David’s faith in 
the presence of Goliath. 

“How will you vote on the question of beer?” is the shibboleth 
of the majority in the Republican party today. By the explicit and 
unanimous resolution of every Liquor Dealers’ Association from 
Boston to San Francisco they put the candidates on trial of their 
lives. . . . From the year of their Organization in 1862 until today, 
the brewers’ wing of the Liquor League has issued in the caucus 
and at the polls commands which the Republican party in Congress 
has scrupulously obeyed... . And yet in the magnificent arena of 
public opinion opposing parties are the only gladiators worthy of 
the scene, and upon their victory or defeat depends the weal or woe 
of the nation. 

We point to the non-partisan homage of which our murdered 
President is the subject but we must not forget that when fifty 
millions gathered round his dying-couch, it was to lament over a 
man who was one of the most loyal partisan leaders of his day, a 
man, too, whose name they would never have heard except as he 
became the standard-bearer of the party which for a generation had 
never known defeat. Parties are the molds into which God pours 
the principles that are to bless humanity. ... 

Our temperance women have been petitioning legislatures which 
were, as a rule, companies of soldiers enlisted for no other purpose 
than to defeat their measures. 

The union of the best elements of the North and South upon the 
principles of the Temperance Reform is a happy omen of the 
destruction of that sectionalism which is so dangerous to the welfare 
of our country and which is the cause of bitterness, wrangling and 
corruption. . 

A political party whose platform is based on constitutional and 
statutory prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic bey- 
erages in the State and Nation is a necessity and, to give those who 


2 Non-Partisanship ; or Do Not Take Temperance into Politics. 


MESSAGES OF FRANCES E. WILLARD 279 


suffer most from the drink curse a power to protect themselves, 
their homes and their loved ones, the complete enfranchisement of 
women should be worked for and welcomed. 


Miss Willard told of the action of the Woman’s Christian 
Temperance Union of Illinois in endorsing the action of the 
Lake Bluff Convocation in initiating the Home Protection party 


which was combined with the Prohibition party the following 
year. Said Miss Willard: 


In many a meeting of our temperance women have I seen the 
power of the Highest manifest, but in none has the glory of Crusade 
fire been so great as when these daughters of heroic sires who, in 
the early days of the great party whose defection we deplore, 
endured reproach without the camp, solemnly declared their loyalty 
to the Home Protection party, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 


The concluding paragraph of the Illinois W. C. T. U. resolu- 
tions reads: 


Finally, to these advanced positions we have been slowly and 
surely brought by the logic of events and the argument of defeat 
in Our seven years’ march since the Crusade. We have patiently 
appealed to existing parties, only to find our appeals disregarded. 
We now appeal to the manhood of our state to go forward in the 
name of “God and Home and Native Land.” 


Miss Willard’s closing appeal in her Washington address was: 


Here, then, at the nation’s capital, let us declare allegiance ; here 
let us turn our faces toward the beckoning future; here, where the 
liquor trafic pours in each year its revenue of gold, stained with 
the blood of our dearest and best, let us set up our Home Protection 
standard in the name of the Lord! 


The following year, 1882, in her presidential address Miss 
Willard again emphasized political action and referred to the 
Prohibition Home Protection party whose organization had been 
effected a few months before as the result of woman’s answered 
prayer. In discussing Home Protection, Miss Willard said: 


We have the tariff to protect industry, the patent laws for the 
inventor, subsidies for steamship companies, land grants for rail- 
ways, charters for corporations but for the homes of America we 
have no adequate protection from the dramshops. Hence, the 
thought that engrosses our country today beyond any other thought 
is home protection. To this end our people are rising up in their 
might to declare the dramshop an outlaw and this is the philosophy 
of the great prohibition movement. 


280 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The national convention of the W. C. T. U. that year, 1882, 
adopted almost unanimously the following resolution: 


We rejoice in the day that gives recognition to our prohibition 
principles by political partisans and we will endeavor to influence 
the best men in all communities to commit themselves to that party, 
by whatever name called, that shall give to them the best embodi- 
ment of prohibition principles, and will most surely protect our 
homes. 


In 1883 a steady progress in thought is exhibited in the presi- 
dential address. Miss Willard said: 


We have seen that the principle of prohibition must be grounded 
in organic law beyond the reach of demagogues and that this must 
be done through non-partisan methods by means of a constitutional 
amendment. We have seen, however, that ENFORCEMENT can 
only be secured by THE ELECTION OF OFFICERS WHO 
WILL ENFORCE. Hence this involves a party committed by its 
hopes and ambitions hardly less than by its principles to the suc- 
cessful working of the law. We have seen that such a party must 
be recruited from the moral elements of society and that these 
cannot include the majority save as the women of the land become 
its devoted and practical adherents. Hence we perceived ourselves 
to be the natural allies of those courageous men, who, in states 
where prohibition is repudiated from the platforms of both Republi- 
cans and Democrats, with the balance of opinion turned against 
them and the partisan press vituperative in its contempt, still plant 
their votes for Prohibition, looking to a harvest in the “sweet by 
and by.” We have beheld the germination of this harvest in half 
a score of states where the “divine right of bolting” has been thus 
exercised, finding by curious coincidence that recognition of the 
principle in caucus and legislature has followed not preceded said 
bolt. 


The convention of that year adopted a resolution similar to 
that of the preceding year and also provided for a memorial to 
the presidential nominating conventions to be held the following 
year.® 

In 1884 the convention was held just before the presidential 
election. Miss Willard in her annual address spoke upon the 
theme “‘Gospel Politics.” In her address she said: 


Existing parties can not in the very nature of the case take up 
this question. Not to this end were they born, not for this cause 
did they come into the world. Upon this issue the voters who com- 
pose them are irrevocably divided. Twenty years ago Governor 
St. John and John Sherman voted one way. Now the latter cham- 

3 See infra, Chapter VIII, p. 146-7. 


MESSAGES OF FRANCES E, WILLARD 281 


pions the brewers’ cause and the former is Prohibition’s standard- 
bearer. Party enclosures must be broken down that men who think 
and vote alike may clasp hands in a political fraternity where the 
issue of today outranks those of yesterday or tomorrow... . 

Frankly to ally itself with this movement will not injure any 
state auxiliary in its effort to get constitutional prohibition. We 
shall be respected for our consistency and feared because of our 
influence by party leaders who know our power to reduce their 
majorities. Iowa’s example should not be lost upon us. The pro- 
hibition vote there was confessedly the precursor of the constitu- 
tional amendment. It is the one form of prohibition that politicians 
dread. Where a man’s ballot registers his plea party leaders must 
pay it respect. One candidate who incarnates our principles is of 
more political value to our cause than ten thousand signatures to a 
petition. But great petitions are great educators of the people. A 
Prohibition candidate is like a lightning rod—he draws the elec- 
tricity of public sentiment on the question of which he is the ex- 
ponent. Embodied issues are sure to condense public thought. 

What strife of tongues rages around the Prohibition candidates 
today, what definiteness and force is given to the movement by 
their personality—President Julius Seelye in Massachusetts, David 
Preston in Michigan, Samuel D. Hastings in Wisconsin, James B. 
Hobbs in Illinois, John A. Brooks in Missouri; how sharply defined 
are these heroic figures where the people can not choose but see! 
And those brave champions yonder in the thickest of the fight, 
John P. St. John and William Daniel—how loyal to them in this 
hour of trial are the hearts of our temperance women! This cause 
will grow until we have no more a solid North against a solid 
South but rejoice in a non-sectional majority solid for prohibition. 
It takes a great cause to move a great people. Protection for the 
home is that cause and America that people... . 

I have seldom seen a statement so pointedly proving the needs 
of a Prohibition party as the following from Hon. C. C. Bonney 
of Chicago, President of the National Citizens League. He says: 

“There is nothing more astounding in American history from 
the treason of Arnold to the murder of Garfield than the neglect 
and refusal of the officers, charged with the enforcement of the 
laws and protection of the people, to enforce the acts of the State 
Legislatures for the restriction of the worst evils of the liquor traffic 
and the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors to the young, 
who are regarded under our system of government as not having 
the judgment and discretion requisite to protect themselves. The 
statement that hundreds of liquor saloons are found whose chief 
business consists of sales made to minors staggers human credulity, 
but it still stands uncontroverted the blackest accusation yet made 
against the civilization of our age. 


282 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


“The fact of non-enforcement being admitted, philanthropy, 
patriotism and justice demand that its cause be discovered, made 
known and removed. The task is not difficult. The secret of non- 
enforcement must be sought in the relation of the liquor traffic to 
the public authorities whose duty it is to take care that the laws be 
obeyed. It is readily found in the actual or supposed political power 
of the persons engaged in the liquor traffic. They command a cer- 
tain desperate, reckless and servile vote—a vote that obeys orders 
and asks no questions. They cast that vote against all candidates 
for public office who do not favor the liquor traffic; if no candidate 
is so opposed, in favor of the one most favorable to it. Hence, 
candidates who feared or believed that they could not be elected 
without the saloon-keeper’s support have made the pledges neces- 
sary to secure it and in fulfilling such pledges have sacrificed the 
public welfare and left unpunished the creatures who, by the sale of 
intoxicating liquors to minors, thrive on the ruin of the young. That 
such bargains for political support constitute the vilest form of 
bribery and corruption need hardly be said for no other political 
infamy could surpass that of a practical surrender of the souls and 
bodies of children to the saloon-keepers in return for their votes.” 

Republicans and Democrats must throw a sop to that Cerberus of 
perdition, the saloon; must be half-hearted in their allegiance to our 
cause; must pander to the liquor men who under the spur of self- 
interest are sure to desert if the party does not consider them rather 
than conciliate the temperance men on whom they can much more 
confidently count to stand by them even though the petitions of 
women, as in Illinois, are rolled into balls and tossed derisively from 
hand to hand by legislators under the dome of the capitol. For 
these parties are made up of elements which, while practically har- 
monious on the issues of the past, are totally discordant on the 
issues of the present. Hence, it is only by reviving the past that 
they can hold together at all. They are political armies recruited 
upon a muster roll at the head of which the word prohibition was 
not written, and how can we expect them to take up our cause 
except in a few exceptional states? No army ever yet did effective 
service when its soldiers were utterly disagreed as to the standards 
to be carried, the leaders to be followed and the issties to be fought. 


The Convention of 1884, after a long and brilliant argument in 
which Mrs. Mary T. Lathrap distinguished herself as an out- 
standing leader, adopted the following political resolution, by a 
vote of over four to one: 


We refer to the history of ten years of persistent moral suasion 
work as fully establishing our claim to be called a non-political 
society, but one which steadfastly follows the white banner of pro- 
hibition wherever it may be displayed. We have, however, as in- 


MESSAGES OF FRANCES E. WILLARD 283 


dividuals, always allied ourselves in local and state political contests 
with those voters whose efforts and ballots have been given to the 
removal of the dramshop and its attendant evils, and at this time, 
while recognizing that our action as a national society is not binding 
upon states or individuals, we reaffirm our position taken by the 
society at Louisville in 1882 and at Detroit in 1883, pledging our 
influence to that party, by whatever name called, which shall furnish 
us the best embodiment of prohibition principles, and will most 
surely protect our homes. And as we now know which national 
party gives us the desired embodiment of the principles for which 
our ten years’ labor has been expended, we will continue to lend 
our influence to the national political organization which declares 
in its platform for National Prohibition and Home Protection. In 
this, as in all progressive effort, we will endeavor to meet argument 
with argument, misjudgment with patience, denunciation with kind- 
ness, and all our difficulties and dangers with prayer. 


Between the conventions of 1884 and 1885 the Repubiican 
party which had been in power twenty-four years was defeated, 
_ the blame for which was placed upon the Prohibition party and 
there developed among many members of the Republican party 
strong opposition to the Prohibition party which reflected itself 
in pressure upon the W. C. T. U. to refrain from such close 
cooperation with it. But, undaunted, Miss Willard continued to 
give reasons for the faith that was within her. 

At the convention of 1885, which was the largest and best con- 
vention which had ever been held up to that time, she again de- 
voted a part of her address to “Our Relations to Politics,” saying, 
in part: 


Eighteen state legislatures, the majority of them Republican, have 
voted down the proposition for a Prohibition constitutional amend- 
ment. . . . We want the Democratic party to bite the dust and will 
do our utmost for its final overthrow. It is the enemy of our 
cause, and we pronounce upon it the “anathema maranatha” of the 
American home. Nor can we do less to that degenerate party 
which some of us once loved but of which the Brewers’ League 
declared, “It has been in power for twenty-five years and has done 
for us all we have asked.” In Ohio its platform would give the 
liquor traffic a permanent legal status; in New York it places two 
men formerly connected with the liquor traffic at the head of its 
ticket ; in Pennsylvania it denies the prayer of the temperance men; 
in Ilinois it is locked with the liquor abomination as one soul. 
The two old parties are nationally the two sworn allies of the saloon. 
The White Ribbon army is the open enemy of both, while the new 
movement, which from the disintegrating forces of the old gathers 


284 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


out the best material for a new party, is the one that has our 
prayers, our hopes, our loyalty. ... 

Do we attain our object by working for something else? Does 
not our non-partisanship help the two old parties? Do we aid the 
new political movement that will tackle the liquor traffic and after- 
ward shackle it, by remaining strictly non-partisan? If, as we have 
repeatedly declared by resolutions, State and National, such a move- 
ment ought to be, is it not our duty to help it to be? But the 
question will be asked, “Just what have we, as a National Union, 
done for the Prohibition party and what do we propose to do?” I 
answer, we have simply let it be known that we have discovered 
that the saloon is entrenched in politics even more firmly than in 
law and our sympathies, appreciation and gratitude must neces- 
sarily go with the voters who carry this issue straight to the caucus, 
the convention and the ballot -box, voting only for men who are 
pledged to give us prohibition. .. . 

Some of our friends urge us to be non-partisan because we have 
always been non-sectarian. But the cases are not parallel. We 
are differently related to churches from what we are to politics. 
Moral suasion methods alone apply to our efforts with denomina- 
tions as such. Nothing in the Methodist creed antagonizes the Tem- 
perance Reform, nor does anything in the Catholic, the Universalist 
or Baptist. Hence we can be strictly non-sectarian and yet wholly 
consistent. 

But something in the Democratic creed does specifically antago- 
nize the Temperance Reform and the same is true of the Republican 
in the proportion that we analyze its record. There are exceptions 
in that party at the North as in the other at the South. But the 
Prohibition party creed coincides exactly with ours. Hence, we 
cannot, in my judgment, be consistently non-partisan, standing in an 
attitude of equal friendship towards politicians who deny, who 
ignore and who espouse the cause of Prohibition. 

How could the W.C.T.U. of Ohio remain neutral when one party 
declared for license, another for tax and a third for prohibition; 
when the Democratic platform was unequivocally committed to the 
liquor interests and in Cincinnati six hundred saloon-keepers in 
convention assernbled voted to support the Republican ticket? It 
seems to me, had the women of the Crusade kept silent, the very 
stones would have cried out against their inconsistency. . . . 

At first we assailed the saloon itself with a directness and courage 
unparallelled in history. Later when we found the saloon to be 
entrenched in law, we followed it straight to city council room and 
legislative hall; and at last when its hidings of power were dis- 
covered to be in politics we followed it there, as brave soldiers 
always pursue their enemy even to its forts and fastnesses. We 
are crusaders as truly as when the outward and visible saloon itself 
was our objective point; only now we have grown wiser and carry 


MESSAGES OF FRANCES E. WILLARD 285 


our crusade straight to the brain, the heart and the conscience of 
the individual voter praying him to represent his horhe constituency 
and to stand at the ballot-box for prohibition first, last and always. 


The National convention passed a resolution similar to that 
of the preceding year, Practically all of the state organizations 
of the W. C. T. U. except Iowa and Vermont favored the Pro- 
hibition party. 

Again in 1886 Miss Willard in her annual presidential ad- 
dress said: 


We are firmly persuaded that the separation of the people into 
two distinct armies, one voting for men who will outlaw the poison 
curse and the other for men who would legalize it, must come and 
that separation cannot come too soon. Today the sheep and goats 
are mixed, and that is not the method of a wise shepherd. Today 
the temperance people are a mob and not an army, save as the 
drums beat, the recruiting goes forward and the battle is being set 
in array by our brave brothers, the political Prohibitionists. God 
bless them in these crucial hours! Their work is slow and hard and 
thankless—harder than the Crusade itself. Indeed, I think of them 
as the Crusaders of the present, worthy sires and sons of women 
brave and true. 

The same pulpits and papers that were most bitter against the 
women in Ohio in 1874 are the bitterest against the, Prohibition 
voters of 1886. To recruit and drill an army is the gigantic task 
to which they have set their heroic hands, Wisely have they turned 
aside from the armies of the past whose watchword is, in Pennsyl- 
vania, “Give the platform to the temperance people and the can- 
didates to the saloons’; and in New Hampshire and Vermont, 
“Favor the law but wink at non-enforcement.” 

An old campaigner whom I met at Lake George said, “We tried 
hard to get the Whig party to take up our anti-slavery cause and 
many of its members wanted to do so but then you see Alexander 
H. Stephens was a Whig.” There was the whole argument in a 
nutshell. Let me paraphrase it. “We tried hard at the North to 
get the Republican party to take up our anti-slavery cause of tem- 
perance, and many of its members wanted to do so, but then, you 


see, Gottlieb, the brewer, is a Republican and so is Herman Raster, 
the politician.” 


THE NEW POLITICS 


Using the theme, “The New Politics,” in 1887, Miss Willard 
in a section of her presidential address held up a standard of 
Christian principles in politics with a sublimity which has sel- 
dom been equaled. 


286 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Some brave men, longer in the work than we, discerned about 
fifteen years ago that the curse had coiled itself up in every caucus, 
darted its venom into every county, district, state and national 
political convention in all the land and had thrown the two great 
political parties into such abject fright that the Kingdom of Christ, 
“which must enter the realm of law through the gateway of poli- 
tics,” as our own Mary T. Lathrap has said, was effectively kept 
out and Satan was victoriously barred in. We then most earnestly 
and prayerfully studied the subject of the Christian versus the 
saloon politician and learned that to offset the influence and ballot 
of the one we must have the ballot and influence of the other. We 
found that legislation against the curse could never be expected 
from the old parties because self-preservation is the first law of 
nature, and each of these parties had a liquor vote large enough to 
defeat it at the polls. We learned that it was not enough to have a 
prohibitory law, the penalties of which were sufficiently heavy to 
make the investment in alcoholic stimulants unsafe, but we must 
have a judiciary that was not controlled by the saloons in its de- 
cisions, and enforcing officers who were true to the cause and to 
their oaths, and besides all this we must have a party in power that 
would defeat any officer that was false to Prohibition. We learnea 
that as our great and lamented leader, John B. Finch, has said: ‘““No 
party will do right if you give it your vote when it does wrong.” 

And so the cry ran all along the line, “To your tents, O Israel, 
come out from among them and be ye separate and touch not the 
unclean thing.” 

He who votes for the saloon politician, or for the saloon poli- 
tician’s candidate, is as bad as he who votes for the saloon itself. 
There are enough temperance men in America, if they will come 
off the sinking old hulks of the past and join the crew on our new 
steamship Prohibition, to bring us into the harbor of deliverance. 

There are not enough anti-saloon Republicans in the North to 
carry prohibition in a single state that is now struggling to secure 
it, nor enough anti-saloon Democrats in the South, as has been 
proved in this memorable year of our Constitutional defeats, but 
there are enough temperance men in both to take possession of the 
government and give us national prohibition in the party of the 
near future which is to be the party of God. When will good men 
see their duty? When will they set their faces to the dawn? When 
will they heed the piteous cry from women whom they love and 
trust, “How long, O Lord, how long?” We pray heaven to give 
them no rest, to banish sleep from their eyelids and peace from 
their hearts until they shall forever part company with the treacher- 
ous leaders who deceive and the traitorous saloon voters who betray 
them, lift the white banner of the party that declares for home 
protection and saloon destruction, swear an oath of allegiance to 


MESSAGES OF FRANCES E. WILLARD 287 


Christ in politics and march in one great army “up to the polls to 
worship God.” 

The Bible is the most political of books. It recognizes more 
clearly than any other that God must rule in politics, else the devil 
surely will. I firmly believe that the patient, steadfast work of 
Christian women will so react upon politics within the next genera- 
tion that the party of God will be at the fore; ministers will preach 
it from their pulpits, and Christian men will be as much ashamed 
to say that they never go to the caucus as they would be now to 
use profane language or defame character; for there is just one 
question that every Christian ought to ask, “What is the relation of 
this party, this platform, this candidate to the setting up of Christ’s 
kingdom on the earth? How does my vote relate to the Lord’s 
Prayer ?” 

The answer to this question is sacred, not secular, worthy to be 
given from the pulpit on the Sabbath day. In the Revolutionary 
War, the question at issue being religious liberty, our forefathers 
felt that they could preach and pray about it om the Sabbath. In 
the Civil War, both sides, believing their cause to be holy, could do 
the same, and now, when it is a question of preserving the Sabbath 
itself and guarding the homes which are the sanctuaries of Christ’s 
gospel, we women believe that no day is too good, no place is too 
consecrated, for the declaration of principles and the determining 
of votes. 

The ascetic in the olden time shut himself away from the world 
and counted everything secular except specific acts of devotion. 
The Christian soldier of today reverses the process and makes 
everything he does a devotional act, an expression of his loyalty to 
Christ—so finding his balance in God that no sin can overcome 
and no sorrow surprise him. Prayer is the pulse of his life; there 
is no secular, no sacred, all is in God, and as the followers of Bruce 
enclosed that hero’s heart in a silver shrine and flung it into the 
ranks of the enemy so that they might fly to win it back, shouting, 
“Heart of Bruce, I follow thee,” so Christian men today take their 
ideal of Christ in government, hurl it into the ranks of His foes and 
hasten on to regain it, by rallying for the overthrow of saloon 
politics and the triumph of the Christian at the polls. 

Our prayers are prophetic and predict the day of glad deliverance 
as being at the door. The man who, in presence of such possi- 
bilities, says, “I don’t want to throw away my vote,” is quite likely 
to throw away something even more valuable—and that is the voter 
himself. For as Miss West has said, ‘“‘Today Christ sits over against 
the ballot-box as of old He sat over against the treasury and judges 
men by what they cast therein.” 


The resolution of 1887 was as follows: 
We rejoice in the great successes which have been gained by the 


288 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Prohibition party during the past year and we again pledge our 
hearty cooperation, assuring it of our prayers and our sympathy. 

We ask the Prohibition party at its coming National Convention 
to reaffirm its former position in regard to woman’s ballot. 


It must be remembered that the support of the Prohibition 
party was not confined to resolutions in the national conventions 
and to the addresses of the National President, but all over the 
country the rank and file were working whole-heartedly for the 
Party. 

Meanwhile the W. C. T. U. was gaining rapidly in member- 
ship. It more than trebled its membership in five years, making 
the largest proportional gains in its whole history in the very 
years that it was most radically championing party action. Said 
Miss Willard in 1888: 


Lugubrious prophecies have been put forth concerning the results 
of our righteous partnership, but none of them have come to any- 
thing more substantial than their own melancholy echoes. We are 
the only temperance society which has specifically declared its 
loyalty to the Prohibition party and we are today the strongest 
and most successful society in Christendom. 


Many of the leaders of the W. C. T. U. were ardent advocates 
of the Prohibition party, notable among them being the “Big 
Four” of the W. C. T. U., composed of Miss Willard, Mrs. Mary 
TL. Lathrap, President ofythe W.)C. 0.00. sof Michigan) iii: 
Mary A. Woodbridge, President of Ohio, and Mrs. Clara C. 
Hoffman, President of Missourl. 

Lack of space prevents a complete record but it is significant 
that, beginning in 1881, Miss Willard in every presidential ad- 
dress, at every national convention of the W. C. T. U. at which 
she spoke, never failed to uphold the Prohibition party and that 
likewise the convention resolutions throughout the same period 
bespoke the cooperation and loyalty of the W. C. T. U. 

Miss Willard’s aggressive championship of the party and the 
official endorsement by the successive national conventions was 
especially praiseworthy because it required courage, leadership, 
and high loyalty to conviction in face of the continuous opposi- 
tion by a small but active minority within the ranks of the 
organization which forced a contest every year from 1884 until 
T88o. 

The opposition was led each year by Mrs. J. Ellen Foster of 
Iowa, who in 1889 caused a small split from the W. C. T. U., 
organizing what was known as the Non-partisan W. C. T. U. 


MESSAGES OF FRANCES E. WILLARD 289 


That organization persisted for some years but never gained much 
strength or vitality. 

That the spirit permeating the secessionists was not non-parti- 
sanism but non-Prohibition-partisanism or rather pro-Republi- 
can-partisanism was indicated by the fact that in 1888 Mrs. 
Foster was elected by the Republican National Campaign Com- 
mittee as the Chairman of the Women’s National Republican 
Committee with headquarters in New York City. Although a 
former advocate of prohibition, she vigorously championed the 
high license campaign of Warner Miller and fought the Prohibi- 
tion party with great vehemence. She received a political reward 
in that her husband was appointed to an office in Washington 
under the Harrison administration and from thenceforth she 
exerted but little influence. 

In 1890 the National W. C. T. U. Convention declared: 


We reiterate that we believe it vital to the temperance reform 
that the principle of Prohibition be recognized as the dominant issue 
in American politics and that party power must stand back of this 
principle in its application through law. We again send the as- 
surance of our good word, good will and prayers to those voters 
who in the fear of God and love of humanity cast their ballots in 
town, state and nation for prohibition measures and prohibition 
men. 


In 1895 it resolved: 


While we heartily approve of the “do everything policy’ of the 
W.C.T.U., we recognize the fact that we were organized to push 
total abstinence and prohibition and we reaffirm our allegiance not 
only to those principles but also to the Prohibition party as the 
only political party with the courage to speak out boldly in favor 
of woman suffrage and the total annihilation of the liquor traffic. 


In 1896 there was an unfortunate split in the Prohibition party 
between the broad platform advocates and the single issue sup- 
porters, precipitated by the free silver controversy. That year 
there were two tickets in the field, one the Prohibition party 
with the single issue of prohibition, although the convention also 
passed a separate resolution favoring woman suffrage; and the 
National party, supporting these two measures and a number of 
others besides, including free silver. The split was extremely 
discouraging to all friends of the cause and the fact that the 
Prohibition party did not that year incorporate a suffrage plank 
in the platform proper tended to bring on a coldness in the atti- 
tude of some of the women toward the Party. 


290 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Notwithstanding this, Miss Willard at the ensuing national 
W.C. T. U. convention at St. Louis in October, 1896, after 
referring to the fact that it had been at the convention held in 
St. Louis twelve years before that the great debate had been held 
which had placed the W. C. T. U. on the side of the Prohibition 
party, said: 


I wish that Mary Lathrap in her splendid prime could stand again 
before us as she stood that day voting to take the position of “lend- 
ing our influence and our prayers’ to the Prohibition party and 
saying in her speech in effect what she said in that great epigram, 
“Between right and wrong only one ground is possible and that is a 
battle ground.” 

Whoever has ceased to love the Prohibition party under its now 
duplicate form? I have not. » Whoever has words of crimination, 
recrimination, incrimination or incineration for anybody connected 
with it? I have not. 

In 1884 when we took our position for God in politics or, as 
Mary Lathrap said, for “‘gospel politics,” the Prohibition party had 
never mustered more than ten thousand votes. . . . The Prohibition 
party is the embodied protest of the home against the saloon and 
I am glad we said so long ago it is our party. 


In the convention of 1897, the last one she ever attended, held 
at a time which was probably the darkest period for the Pro- 
hibition party in its whole history, Miss Willard continued to 
exhibit her abiding faith in the future in these words: 


The fact that both wings of the party fell off at the last presi- 
dential election was a grievous one and shows that silver and gold 
are infinitely more interesting to our people than the safety of their 
boys and girls. But some day this issue will be at the front and 
meanwhile we propose to keep in “de middle of de road” with one 
of our stalwart Prohibition brothers from each of the two groups 
as our guard of honor on either side and all our faces set toward 
that Republic of God which is steadily growing in the hearts of all 
good men and women. 


With the lamented death of Miss Willard on February 17, 
1898, she of unequaled vision, of matchless leadership, and com- 
plete consecration, the official relationship between the Union and 
the Party became less close. Many individuals and state and 
local leaders continued to give their utmost loyalty and sup- 
port but the annual resolutions and continuous, unbroken em- 
phasis in the annual presidential addresses were past. 

Miss Willard’s successor as president came from Maine, a 
state where most of the temperance people seemed to think that 


MESSAGES OF FRANCES E. WILLARD 291 


in order to obtain even a very moderate degree of enforcement, 
extremely unsatisfactory though it was, it was necessary to make 
close alliance with the Republican party. 

The organization came to devote its efforts more largely to 
non-political fields, its forty or more departments offering a wide 
scope of choice for activity, and it failed to maintain the lofty 
political idealism of Miss Willard. 

In later years, although it took a large part in the elections 
where the liquor question was submitted to a direct vote, the 
deeper political complexities of the liquor problem were but little 
fathomed. Its leaders were not profound students of the philos- 
ophy of government or prophets of the higher politics comparable 
to Miss Willard. 

No organization did more to develop the sentiment which led 
to the placing of the principle of prohibition in the Constitution 
of the United States than did the Woman’s Christian Temper- 
ance Union. 

In the latter part of the nineteenth century the most uniformly 
successful and far-reaching of any branch of temperance work 
was that of the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction 
of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which, under the 
leadership of Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, between 1882 and 1902 se- 
cured laws in every state in the Union providing for the teaching 
of the effects of alcohol upon the human system in the public 
schools of the land. As a result a generation of young people 
passed through the public schools who acquired at least some of 
the foundational facts regarding the nature and effects of alcohol. 
The teachings in the public schools disseminated over the nation 
a knowledge of some of the facts which formed the scientific 
basis for prohibition. 

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was the one or- 
ganization which through the years maintained in thousands of 
cities, towns and hamlets throughout the country local organized 
groups. They were composed of members who were always 
faithful and loyal to the Cause and who could always be depended 
upon for service in its behalf. 

Too much praise cannot be given the multitude of devoted, 
noble, Christian women who, from the Crusade days onward 
\ through more than half a century to the present, have continu- 
ously labored and sacrificed that humanity might be freed from 
the curse of the liquor traffic. 


292 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


SELECT REFERENCES 


For Miss Willard’s presidential addresses 1880-1897, see the 
successive Reports of the National Conventions of the 
W. C. T. U. published annually. 

For Miss Willard’s life, see: 

Witiarp, Frances E.—Glimpses of Fifty Years, the Auto- 
biography of an American Woman, 1889, 697 pp. 

Gorpon, ANNA A.—Frances E. Willard, A Memorial Volume, 
1808, 416 pp. 

——The Life of Frances E. Willard, 1912, 357 pp., published by 
National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Evans- 
ton, Ill. 

Bascock, Mrs. Bernre—An Uncrowned Queen, 1902, 270 pp. 

WILLARD, Frances E.—Woman and Temperance, 1884, revised 
1897, 648 pp. 

The latest history of the W. C. T. U. is Women Torch Bearers, 
by E11zaBeTH Putnam Gorpon, 1924, 268 pp. National 
W.C.T. U. Publishing House, Evanston, Ill. 


Chapter XVII 
THE DISPENSARY SYSTEM 


A counter proposal to prohibition which achieved some strength 
in the early nineties was the proposal that the state itself should 
establish a monopoly of the sale of lquor in order to eliminate 
the element of private profit, which was regarded as one of the 
main sources of the liquor evil. 

The dispensary system, or system of state monopoly, was to a 
large degree an American adaptation of the Gothenburg system 
of private monopoly which was extensively heralded in anti-pro- 
hibition propaganda, there having been several magazine articles 
and a few books written in its advocacy. The Gothenburg sys- 
tem and the dispensary system were alike in that the intention 
of each was to eliminate the element of private profit from 
the sale of liquor. 

There were a few Prohibitionists in the early period of its 
agitation who were hospitable to the idea thinking it might be an 
improvement over the license system and supposedly a step to pro- 
hibition. But both the Gothenburg and the dispensary system 
were advocated chiefly by those who were opposed to prohi- 
bition and did not want to give up alcoholic beverages but who 
were not insensible to the gross evils of the existing license 
system. 

Although there had been local dispensaries at Athens, Georgia, 
and a few other places, the dispensary system as a state measure 
was first put into operation in South Carolina. There it was 
adopted as a compromise to head off prohibition. 

For several years prior to 1892 there had been a growing 
movement for prohibition in South Carolina. In 1889 a pro- 
hibitory bill was defeated in the House of Representatives by only 
eight votes. The next session it passed the House but was de- 
feated in the Senate. In 1892 a popular vote for or against pro- 
hibition was taken as an expression of the sentiment of the 
people and there was a majority of about 10,000 for prohibition 
out of a total vote of about 68,000. Twenty-seven of the thirty- 
five counties gave majorities for prohibition. At the following 

293 


294 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


session of the Legislature a prohibitory measure passed the House 
by a vote of fifty-seven to thirty-seven, and was about to pass 
the Senate when, near the close of the session, Governor Tillman 
and his associates suddenly decided upon the dispensary system 
as a device to head off prohibition. He had recently been elected 
Governor as the representative of a radical or reform faction 
of the Democratic party, which faction included a large share 
of the rougher element of the voters of the state. It was gen- 
erally considered that he did not wish to alienate that element 
by depriving them of their liquor. The bill was put through the 
Senate as a substitute for the prohibition bill and sent back 
to the House where the prohibition advocates were given to un- 
derstand that they would have to accept the dispensary bill or 
nothing. Some of them, influenced by the claim that it was a step 
toward prohibition, voted for it, and the bill was passed, the 
law taking effect July 1, 1893. 


PROVISIONS OF THE SYSTEM 


The law provided for the complete state monopoly of both the 
wholesale and retail liquor trade. It forbade private citizens to 
sell liquor. 

After the modification of the law in 1896 the system was about 
as follows: There was a state Board of Control composed of 
five members elected by the Legislature. This Board appointed 
the central commissioners in direct charge and also the clerks 
and subordinate officers and fixed their salaries. It also ap- 
pointed county boards of control in the several counties which 
were composed of three members in each county by whom in 
turn the local dispensers were appointed. 

There was a central state dispensary for the wholesale dis- 
tribution to the local dispensaries. The profits of the central 
dispensary were devoted to the school fund and those of the 
local dispensaries were divided between the municipality and the 
county. 

Purchasers were required to make written application for what 
they bought and the liquor was not to be drunk on the premises. 

The original law provided that each county might upon a 
petition of a majority of the freehold voters of the county seat, 
establish a dispensary but the act did not apply to counties and 
towns already under local prohibition. When the law went into 
effect there were six counties and about sixty towns and villages 
under local no-license. 


THE DISPENSARY SYSTEM 295 


CLAIMS FOR THE DISPENSARY 


Four months after it went into operation Governor Tillman 
in an address made the following claims for the dispensary : 


1. The element of personal profit is destroyed, thereby removing 
the incentive to increase the sales. 

2. A pure article is guaranteed. 

3. The customer obtains honest measure of standard strength. 

4. Treating is stopped, as the bottles are not opened on the 
premises. ) 

s. It is sold only in the daytime; this under a regulation of the 
board and not under the law. 

6. The concomitants of ice, sugar, lemons, etc., being removed 
there is not the same inclination to drink remaining, and the closing 
of the saloons, especially at night, and the prohibition of its sale 
by the drink, destroy the enticements and seductions which have 
caused so many men and boys to be led astray and enter on the 
downward course. 

7, It is sold only for cash and there is no longer “chalking up” 
for daily drinks against pay day. The workingman buys his bottle 
of whisky Saturday night and carries the rest of his wages home. 

8. Gambling dens, pool rooms and lewd houses which have 
hitherto been run almost invariably in connection with saloons, 
which were thus a stimulus to vice, separated from’ the sale of 
liquor, have had their patronage reduced to a minimum, and there 
must necessarily follow a decrease of crime. 

9. The local whisky rings which have been the curse of every 
municipality in the state, and have always controlled municipal elec- 
tions, have been torn up root and branch and the influence of the 
barkeeper as a political manipulator is absolutely destroyed. The 
police, removed from the control of these debauching elements, will 
enforce the law against evil-doing with more vigor, and a higher 
tone and greater purity in all governmental affairs must result. 


RESULTS 


For a time there appeared to be considerable improvement. 
The closing of over six hundred licensed saloons seemed to be a 
decided gain. When Governor Tillman made the above ad- 
dress, November I, 1893, there were fifty-one dispensaries but 
by 1896 there were ninety-one, and the number continued to in- 
crease. Dispensaries were opened practically everywhere that 
they could be made to be profitable and liquor was easily acces- 
sible to every one. 


296 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Taking up seriatim the claims made for the Dispensary by 
its chief protagonist: 

I. The element of personal profit was not entirely removed. 
It was still to the interest of the dispenser to promote his sales 
as the maintenance of his position depended upon his conducting 
a profitable establishment and an increase in salary was probable 
only in case the business increased. 

Still worse, the element of public profit was added as an in- 
centive which affected the community as a whole through appeal- 
ing to the cupidity of taxpayers. A survey of the history of the 
dispensary system makes manifest that the revenue motive was 
the ruling one. 

The dispensary did not do away with personal incentive to in- 
crease the sales but it continued the incentive of the seller and, 
in addition, extended that incentive to the whole community in a 
still greater degree than under the old license system. The 
management of the dispensary system loudly praised its financial 
success, Before its adoption the total license fees in the state 
amounted to about $215,000. After a few years of the dispen- 
sary the profits amounted to about $540,000 a year, an amount 
equal to that raised by the State through taxation. 

2. Emphasis was placed on the purity of the article. In an 
address at Buffalo in 1901, Senator Tillman defending the dis- 
pensary gave as an illustration of the better quality of the 
dispensary whisky the experience of a man who had been in the 
habit of going to town regularly and buying a quart of whisky 
and, “stopping on the way home to share it with a couple of 
cronies and reaching home straight as a line without a drop left 
in the bottle! When the dispensary law went into effect, this 
man went to town, got a quart of whisky, found it a bigger quart 
of whisky than he had ever bought before, and a better quart, 
stopped and had a few drinks with his cronies, and knew nothing 
until two o’clock in the morning when he woke up in a cornfield 
and found that the bottle was only half empty.” 

In other words the liquor which could produce the worst 
intoxication appeared to the Senator to be the purer and better 
article. ‘This was in harmony with what has long been recog- 
nized, that alcohol is the outstanding deleterious factor in liquor 
and no matter how pure it is alcohol is a habit-forming, narcotic 
poison. 

3. With regard to honest measure the customer would usually 
be better off if he received a short measure. But even here sub- 


THE DISPENSARY SYSTEM 297 


sequent investigations indicated that in some cases the dispensary 
managers were dishonest even in this respect. 

4. Treating within the place where originally sold was lessened 
but purchasers bought bottles and took them outside and treated 
their cronies. Negroes and whites would gather on the street 
corners and in the alleys and at other places and pass the bottle 
around and otherwise conduct drinking parties of the worst 
character. Frequently more liquor was consumed than ordinarily 
ina saloon as the supply was always available. Besides, many of 
the dispensaries came to ignore the law against selling for con- 
sumption on the premises and fitted up an adjoining room where 
liquor was served. 

s. The provision regarding selling only in the daytime became 
of little value, because supplies could easily be procured from 
the dispensary for use at any time and place, and also because 
of the connection which came to exist between the dispensary and 
the blind tigers. 


BLIND TIGERS 


For the first few years some effort was made to suppress blind 
tigers which were then supplied chiefly by moonshine stills. 

Later, an effort was made to compete with them by putting on 
the market an eighty proof whisky composed of eighty per cent 
whisky and twenty per cent water, which could hardly be termed 
the pure article as described by Senator Tillman. In this way 
it was sought to put on the market a brand of whisky at a 
cheaper rate than the blind tigers could supply it. 

Another effort to compete with the blind tigers was the opening 
of a number of beer dispensaries, frequently contrary to the 
wishes of the people of the localities where they were placed. 
The establishment of beer dispensaries was not authorized by 
law but was undertaken by the State Board of Control without 
special authority. 

The next step was a virtual surrender to the blind tigers by 
which they were left practically unmolested provided they pur- 
chased their supplies from the dispensaries, thus allowing the 
dispensary a profit. The blind tigers could obtain a patronage at 
a higher price because they were open at all hours and the usual 
saloon environment attached. They were practically unrestricted 
saloons. 

The blind tigers were forced to purchase of the dispensaries 


298 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


because of the administrative policy of prosecuting those who 
purchased elsewhere but of refraining from prosecuting those who 
bought from the dispensaries. 

Because of the intricate ramifications of the dispensary machine 
in politics this policy could be carried out. 

An investigation made in 1902 showed that there were over 
three hundred blind tigers selling liquor which had paid a fed- 
eral internal revenue tax besides many others which did not pay 
the federal tax. A mapping of the location of the blind tigers 
in Charleston and Columbia revealed that they were especially 
numerous in the vicinity of the dispensaries. In Charleston, a 
city with a population of about 55,000, two hundred and eight 
blind tigers were located within the business district. 

Irom a moral standpoint the attitude of the administrators of 
the dispensary system toward blind tigers is not surprising. If 
it is assumed that the traffic in liquor is sufficiently legitimate to 
be carried on by the state, if it is granted that the evils are not 
inherent in the nature of alcohol and that a public traffic for 
profit is justifiable, it is only a step to making no distinction as 
to how or where sold. When the major principle of the inherent 
evil of alcohol was surrendered, the minor one of the surround- 
ings where it was sold could easily be given up. 

The fact that blind tigers were allowed to exist with the con- 
nivance and cooperation of the dispensary authorities, provided 
they purchased their liquor from the dispensaries, destroyed most 
of the force of most of Senator Tillman’s claims. 


POLITICAL CORRUPTION 


6. The Senator asserted that the dispensary would destroy the 
influence of the barkeeper in politics. In this respect the situa- 
tion became worse if that were possible. 

Under the dispensary system there developed a political ma- 
chine which for corruption was scarcely exceeded by Tammany 
at its worst. 

The state board, together with the county boards and local dis- 
pensers and clerks, formed a network of officers covering the 
state, a group of office holders, appointed through political influ- 
ence, who were engaged in a debauching traffic. The system at- 
tracted a low class of unscrupulous politicians and naturally there 
was much corruption, graft, malfeasance and defalcation. 
Nearly every man connected with it was besmirched by the cor- 
ruption. Originally a few higher class advocates of the system 


THE DISPENSARY SYSTEM 299 


‘dentified themselves with it for the laudable purpose of eliminat- 
ing some of the evils of the old license system. But even some 
of these became corrupted. There was one case of a Presbyterian 
elder who fell and it was found that he had defaulted to the 
extent of $1200. 

There was a constant incentive to engage in politics. There 
was an incentive for the dispensary machine to control the Legis- 
lature in order to maintain the dispensary system against its Op- 
ponents and also to control the appointments to the state board. 

There was also a constant incentive to control local politics. 
Among other reasons, the dispensaries sought to protect their 
chief patrons, the blind tigers, against prosecution. ‘lhe conse- 
quence was that the quality of law enforcement officers and the 
jury system degenerated so that it was difficult in some counties 
to secure ordinary justice. The type of jurors placed on the jury 
panel was such that a high class lawyer did not want to jeopardize 
a good case by submitting it to such low type jurors. One indica- 
tion that the administration of justice was corrupted and a 
primary function of government crippled was the fact that in 
the six-year period prior to the adoption of the dispensary 52 
per cent of the criminal cases brought in the courts of the state 
resulted in convictions, while in a six-year period under the dis- 
pensary only 24 per cent resulted in convictions. 

The dispensary machine was able to finance itself not merely 
by patronage but also because of the opportunities for graft. 
One source of graft was corruption money furnished by distillers 
and wholesale liquor dealers outside the state who wanted to sell 
their liquors to the dispensaries. 

The machine, covering the whole state, was able to dominate 
elections for a dozen years. During that period a man could 
hardly hope to be elected to an important office if he opposed the 
dispensary system. 

A legislative investigation made in 1905 revealed an almost un- 
believable extent of political corruption. Positions connected 
with the dispensary were bartered and sold, even fifty dollars a 
month clerkships were bartered because of the opportunities for 
graft. 

The result of the investigation was that at the next session of 
the Legislature in 1906 the state dispensary was abolished and the 
matter of continuing local dispensaries was left to the counties. 

In 1908 twenty-one of the forty-one counties of the state re- 
tained their dispensaries which were conducted with increasing 
profits, the total in that year amounting to $934,600; but in 


800 PROHIBITION IN. THE UNITED STATES 


1909 sixteen of the twenty-one dispensary counties voted dry, 
many of them by overwhelming majorities. Only five dispensary 
counties remained. The liquor side later regained eleven, how- 
ever, so that there were sixteen dispensary counties when the 
people voted decisively to end the dispensary system entirely by 
adopting statewide prohibition in 1915 by a vote of 41,735 to 
16,809. 

7. The effect of the dispensary upon crime, as compared with 
license, was difficult to determine owing to the limited amount of 
statistics available. But a study made of the reports of the 
attorneys-general concerning the number of criminal cases dis- 
posed of by the courts indicated a worse situation under the 
dispensary than before. In the first six years of the dispensary, 
as compared to the immediately preceding six-year period under 
the license system, there was an increase under the dispensary of 
about 40 per cent in assaults and nearly 100 per cent in homicides. 

8. The theory of the dispensary system is false because it is 
based on the false assumption that the chief evil is in the profits 
incentive and in the associations where sold, whereas the most 
serious evils are inherent in the very nature of alcohol. 

Alcoholic poison is just as deleterious when sold by a gov- 
ernment agent as when sold by the slum grogseller. Monopoly 
liquor is just as habit-forming and appetite-developing as any 
other. kind. The implications of the dispensary system are as 
false and absurd as an assertion of Senator Tillman in 1905 that 
“alcoholic beverages in moderation are not more harmful than 
tea or coffee, probably less so.” If that premise is accepted, a 
dispensary system is explicable; but if the conclusions of modern 
science and common observation with regard to alcohol are 
accepted, the foundational basis is swept away. 

9g. The educational effect of the dispensary system was bad. 
The fact that the state itself was engaged in the sale of liquor 
gave an air of respectability to drinking customs which they 
did not have before. It tended to make drinking and drunken- 
ness respectable. It became a tremendous public educational 
system lowering the moral tone of the state. It put the seal of 
state approval on drinking with the consequence that there was 
a steady increase in the consumption of liquor. 

The sales practically doubled in the six years following 1899, 
the year when sales to blind tigers became general and from 
which time the figures of sales are a close index of consumption. 
In 1899 the sales amounted to about a million and three-quarters 


THE DISPENSARY SYSTEM 301 


dollars and in 1905 they amounted to about three and one-half 
million dollars. 

10. The moral phase was repugnant to right thinking people. 
When it is wrong for an individual to put the bottle to his neigh- 
bor’s lips, by what standard can a state do that which is wrong 
for the individual? It lowers the state to the position of bar- 
keeper, an occupation almost universally execrated. 

The idea of a state wilfully and directly debauching its own 
citizens is abhorrent to a thinking, patriotic citizen. 

For the state to engage in the sale of liquor is inimical to the 
spirit, purpose and genius of our political institutions and sub- 
versive of the peace and order of society, a negation of the very 
purpose for which organized society, or the State, exists. 


ALCOHOL’S REVERSION TO TYPE 


The history of the dispensary system is a good illustration of. 
the universal deteriorating tendency of alcohol. 

The dispensary system started out with great promises of 
restriction and limitation but there was a rapid reversion to the 
typical debasing. effects of the perpetuation of the alcohol traffic 
no matter how carried on. 

It provided heavy penalties for illicit selling but ended up by 
giving practically an open field to blind tigers provided they 
allowed the dispensary to obtain its profit. 

It started out to require every purchaser to sign an ap- 
plication. This provision was soon disregarded. 

It started out to turn the profits of the central dispensary into 
the school fund. Later it limited the percentage of the profit 
given to the school fund to 10 per cent and the rest was applied 
to reduce taxation and thus appeal still more to the cupidity 
of the taxpayers. 

It started out to refrain from placing dispensaries in com- 
munities where the people did not want them. It ended up by 
establishing them everywhere they would pay. In one county 
where there had been a majority of over a thousand against per- 
mitting the sale, the signatures of seventy-nine people, thirty- 
four of whom were negroes, brought the dispensary. 

It started to enforce the law with vigor but it placed govern- 
ment in the hands of the worst elements and rendered it almost 
impotent to perform the normal functions of government. It 
was vastly more difficult to try to enforce law with the un- 


302 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


limited sale of liquor through the dispensary going on than where 
the entire traffic was outlawed. 

It started out to remove the saloon from politics. It ended 
by creating the worst state political machine in the South since 
Reconstruction. 

The history of the dispensary should be a warning to those 
who would listen to the seductive claims of those who would 
perpetuate the traffic in any form. 

Finally, instead of being a step toward prohibition it was a 
hindrance. Although in 1892 South Carolina was nearer to 
the passage of a prohibitory law than any neighboring state, 
having voted in favor of prohibition by ten thousand majority, 
there followed a setback so that all of the adjoining states had 
passed prohibitory laws from six to eight years before South 
Carolina. 

Georgia adopted a prohibitory law in 1907, North Carolina 
in 1908 and Tennessee in 1909, but South Carolina did not adopt 
state prohibition until 1915. When, after twenty-two years of 
trial, the people got an opportunity to directly express their judg- 
ment respecting the merits of the dispensary system as com- 
pared to prohibition they showed their revulsion against the 
dispensary by giving it less than 29 per cent of their votes and 
giving prohibition over 71 per cent. This was the largest per- 
centage of votes that prohibition had yet received in any state 
with the exception of Maine where after prohibition had been 
tried for thirty-three years, about 75 per cent of the people 
voted to place it in the state constitution. 

South Carolina, after having experienced the contrast between 
the dispensary and prohibition, and having enjoyed the benefits 
of prohibition, hastened in 1918 to be the fourth state to ratify 
the National Prohibition Constitutional Amendment. 

South Dakota. The only other state to try the dispensary 
system as a state measure was South Dakota. There, after the 
repeal of the prohibitory law in 1896 and the return of license, 
conditions became worse and were so bad it was determined to 
try the dispensary system. In the election of 1898 it was adopted 
by a vote of 22,170 to 20,557. But two years later the people 
voted it out by the most decisive majority they had ever given 
in that state upon the liquor question. They voted to repeal the 
dispensary law, 48,673 to 33,927. 

There were some local communities in the southern states and a 
few in South Dakota which continued the dispensary for a few 
years but the consequences were so similar to the ordinary 


THE DISPENSARY SYSTEM 303 


saloon that as a temperance measure it was a decided failure and 
the agitation for the dispensary lost its force. 


SELECT REFERENCES 


Light on the South Carolina Dispensary, Evidence taken before 
Wee ourt: of Claims!) Todas, 24 pp, 

WaALprRON, GEORGE B.—The Prohibition Handbook. 1896. Pp. 
65-69. 

Woottey, JOHN G., and JonHnson, WiLLt1am E.—Temperance 

Progress in the Nineteenth Century. 1903. Chap. xviii. 

Debate between Senator B. R. Tillman and Samuel Dickie. The 
V oice, August 15, 1895. 

Hopkins, A. A., on The Dispensary Law—The New Voice, 
April 4, 1901, and editorial in the same number “The 
Element of Personal Profit.” 

McLauren, JoHN L., ex-U. S. Senator, on The Failure of 
South Carolina Dispensary. The New Voice, August 10, 
1905. In same number editorial on “The Dispensary.” 

Investigating Committee Pries the Lid Off of South Carolina’s 
Rotten Dispensary. The New Voice, August 24, 1905. 

For reports of ‘testimony in legislative investigations see South 
Carolina General Assembly Reports and Resolutions. 
1906. Vol. 1. Pp. 965-1542. 

7900, » Viel. gi. Rpal 19-572. 
1907. Vol. 3. Pp. 395-499. 

For an account of a more recent similar experiment in Canada, 
see Macponatp, A. B.—Whirlpools of Beer; The Quebec Ex- 
periment Brings the Reverse of Temperance and Sobriety, 
Ladies’ Home Journal, November, 1923. 


Chapter XVIII 
THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 
THE CAMPAIGNS OF I900 AND 1904 


Beginning in 1900 there was a decided revival of party interest 
and activity. Two new phases of the question brought forward 
as a consequence of the Spanish-American War served to arouse 
the country. One was the army canteen; the other was the ex- 
pansion of the liquor traffic in our new possessions. 

‘The canteen was a saloon kept by military authority in camps, 
posts and garrisons to sell liquor to the soldiers. In theory it sold 
only beer and light wines, but in practice it sold any and all 
kinds of intoxicants. Officially in the army it was usually re- 
ferred to as the “post exchange” which was the army name for 
the general store. But, although the canteen was theoretically a 
branch of the exchange, it frequently existed where no other 
department of the post exchange was maintained. It existed by 
virtue of a general order, not by law, though various laws were 
enacted limiting it, notably the law forbidding it to sell liquor of 
any kind in prohibition territory, which it persistently violated. 

The canteen was thoroughly bad in every way. Drunkenness, 
crime, disease and many other evils resulted from it. Although 
the sale of liquor in the canteen or post exchange had existed 
since February, 1889, when the Secretary of War issued an 
order permitting it, the Spanish-American War brought it to 
general public attention. The brewers used the canteen to sell 
liquor to the army with appalling results. Although only a 
few soldiers were killed in battle the nation was stirred by the 
mortality in the camps. 

At Camp Thomas, Chickamauga Park, Georgia, there were 
fifty canteens notwithstanding it was no-license territory. Sol- 
diers died there in great numbers and when subsequently the 
fever broke out in Cuba it was commonly stated that the first 
to succumb were the heavy consumers of liquor in the canteens. 

Finally, in March, 1899, Congress passed an anti-canteen 
law. Soon thereafter Louis Schade, who for many years had 
been a notorious liquor lobbyist and was the editor of the Wash- 

304 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 305 


ington Sentinel, a liquor organ, suggested to Secretary of War 
Alger, so he afterwards boasted in his paper, that while the anti- 
canteen law forbade the detailing of any soldier to sell liquor, as 
was customary before the law was passed, and while the law did 
forbid that any person should be “required or allowed” to sell 
liquor it did not forbid hiring men to sell liquor in the canteen. 
The War Department asked Attorney-General Griggs, who had 
been a liquor attorney, for an opinion and he, in a labored 
argument and by a very strained construction, construed the 
law in accordance with the suggestion of the liquor lobbyist. 
The Griggs opinion brought forth a storm of indignant pro- 
tests from all parts of the country. Some newspapers which 
had been ardent supporters of President McKinley denounced 
the fake construction and declared that if the President permitted 
a subordinate thus to nullify the law he would be held respon- 
sible. The President had power to make and publish regulations 
for the government of the army. Besides he had authority over 
his cabinet. He himself recognized this. It was stated by a 
prominent clergyman, a friend of the President who reported 
a conversation with him to a preachers’ meeting in New York, 
that President McKinley said to the clergyman that he could 
ask for the resignation of his Attorney-General and take the 
matter of executing the anti-canteen law into his own hands. 
He also said that were it not campaign year he would issue an 
order closing the canteen at once but that he would not do so 
as the act would be misconstrued and his political opponents 
would make stock of it.* 

Evidently the President was afraid to offend the liquor power. 
He let the ruling stand and liquor selling in the army con- 
tinued, the only difference being that the bartenders were 
civilians. The canteen was only one phase of the liquor con- 
flict but it was very conspicuous in 1900.* 

The other new phase was the result of the occupation of the 
Philippines. Dewey had won the battle of Manila Bay on 
May 1, 1898, but it was August 13 before the Americans ob- 
tained possession of Manila, At that time there were only three 
saloons of the American type in the city. Whisky was com- 
paratively unknown. There was only one brewery there. It 
was a small affair and operated only part of the time. 

But before Manila was taken by the soldiers a shipload of 


1S. C. Swallow, III Score and X, p. 175. 
2 William P, F. Ferguson, The Canteen in the United States Army, republished 
in the Vindicator, Feb. 2 to July 12, 1912. 


306 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


American liquor arrived in the harbor. The liquor agent in 
charge of its distribution was with the army wearing a mili- 
tary uniform under the guise of a volunteer aid. When the 
city was taken, he cast off his uniform and proceeded to estab- 
lish saloons. A month after the American occupation there 
were saloons in every part of the city. Other liquor cargoes 
came and within a short time there were more than three hun- 
dred American saloons in Manila selling not only to the sol- 
diers but to the natives to whom the coming of the Americans 
should have been a blessing. 

This “imperial expansion” of the liquor traffic, this type of 
“benevolent assimilation” protected by the flag, which it would 
have been possible for the President under his military power to 
have stopped, caused many of the better class of people to become 
aroused. These situations formed the groundwork for the most 
militant campaign the party had yet conducted. 

On January I, 1900, Oliver W. Stewart took office as the 
new National Chairman. During the preceding four years he 
had distinguished himself both as Chairman of the National 
Convention of 1896, where he presided with great ability, and 
as State Chairman of Illinois, where under his leadership many 
meetings had been held and the Illinois prairies had become 
aflame with prohibition enthusiasm. He was only thirty-one. 
Young, able, eloquent and magnetic he traversed the country 
visiting all of the state conventions and strengthened the organi- 
zation in every state. 

There was a group of faithful state chairmen who had been 
serving under difficult conditions and with heavy sacrifice. The 
history of the cause cannot fail to pay high tribute to men like 
J. J. Ashenhurst, of Ohio, who did double duty as state chairman 
and as the able editor of the Cornerstone, the state organ; Dr. 
Homer J. Hall, of Indiana, who had inaugurated a system of 
district evangelists providing for an evangelist or organizer in 
each Congressional district, who devoted his entire time to build- 
ing up the party; James H. Durkee, of New York; Alva H. 
Morrill, of Massachusetts; Oliver Hemstreet, of Maryland; 
Charles E. Stokes, of Missouri; Fred E. Britten, of Michigan; 
T. B. Demaree, of Kentucky; Hale Johnson, of Illinois; Charles 
kK. Jones, of Pennsylvania; J. E. Clayton, of Wisconsin; f. H. 
Amos, of Oregon; H. Clay Needham, of California; O. D. Ellett, 
of Iowa; James Perrigo, of Maine; and the splendid trio of 
Minnesota’ lead ers, George W. Higgins, George F, Wells and 
Wa: Calderwood. 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 307 


The state conventions that year nominated an unusually able 
group of candidates. Indiana nominated for Governor a suc- 
cessful manufacturer and respected philanthropist, Charles Eck- 
hart. Massachusetts nominated for Governor, John M. Fisher ; 
West Virginia, T. R. Carskadon; Wisconsin, J. Burritt Smith; 
Nebraska, L. O. Jones; Michigan, Prof. F. S. Goodrich; Wash- 
ington, R. E. Dunlap; and Kentucky, John D. White, who, 
although he had served two terms in Congress had recently leit 
his old party because of its pro-liquor attitude and joined the 
Prohibition party. Another prominent public man who joined 
the party that year was L. C. Hughes who had been the Terri- 
torial Governor of Arizona. 

Mention should also be made of the inspiring influence of the 
various state conventions. These conventions were held in some 
states every year, in others every two years and were the rally- 
ing centers for the Prohibitionists of the state. There were 
always able speakers, usually orators of national prominence as 
well as the leaders of the state, and no party ever had a larger 
percentage of able orators than the Prohibition party. 


THE INDIANA CONVENTION OF I900 


For illustration, the Indiana’ convention of 1900 was typical 
of scores of state conventions. 

Nearly six hundred delegates assembled from all sections of 
the state. With badges fluttering from their breasts and earnest- 
ness expressed in their faces they came for counsel and inspira- 
tion, all imbued with the purpose to destroy the liquor traffic. 
There were old veterans who told proudly how they had voted 
the ticket every year since 1884 and there were first voters who 
were dedicating themselves to the cause. 

A young people’s diamond medal contest was held the first 
afternoon, followed by the meeting of the delegates by Con- 
gressional districts to select the members for the various con- 
vention committees, to select district delegates to the national 
convention, and also to choose a candidate for presidential elector. 
In some cases Congressional nominations also were made. 

The first night a large mass meeting was held with the large 
auditorium filled to capacity. In the decorations flags were pro- 
fusely used. Pictures were displayed of Frances E. Willard and 
of the party candidates in national campaigns, Fisk and Brooks, 
Bidwell and Cranfill, Levering and Johnson. 

Mottoes were conspicuous, including : “It Can Never Be Legal- 


308 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


ized Without Sin,’ “A Man’s Vote is His Stock in His Govern- 
ment,’ “The Canteen is the McKinley-Griggs Army Saloon,” 
“The Right to Vote Should Not be Denied on Account of Sex.” 

Charles M. Fillmore, who that year published a book of pro- 
hibition songs, led in song and there were also two prohibition 
quartettes to furnish music. 

Like every prohibition convention it was opened with prayer. 

The speeches the first night included short addresses by State 
Chairman Britten of Michigan, State Chairman Demaree of Ken- 
tucky, and Mrs. Johnson of Washington, a national W. C. T. U. 
lecturer. ‘The main address was given by National Chairman 
Stewart. 

The second morning the convention was called to order by 
State Chairman Dr. Homer J. Hall, who introduced the Tempo- 
rary Chairman, President T: C. Reade of Taylor University, 
who delivered the keynote address. 

The Committees on Rules and Permanent Organization, on 
Credentials and on Resolutions reported. Charles E. Newlin was 
made Permanent Chairman and made a stirring address. Ed- 
ward W. Clark was chosen Secretary. The platform had been 
so ably drafted that it was adopted as a whole almost unani- 
mously, Quincy Lee Morrow made an eloquent plea for financial 
support. Thirteen pledged $100 each. Among these was an 
old soldier receiving a pension of thirty dollars a month. He 
took three months’ pay and added ten dollars as his offering to 
the cause. Another one-hundred-dollar gift was from a minister 
who was receiving a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars .a 
year. Nearly half a hundred others gave fifty or twenty-five 
dollars each. To most of these their contributions meant real 
sacrificial giving. 

A list of candidates for eleven different offices was named, in 
some cases chosen unanimously, in others after a friendly rivalry. 
Delegates at large to the national convention were also chosen. 

Several of the candidates named made ringing acceptance 
speeches which added to the enthusiasm of the convention. 

Five of the eleven nominees had served as soldiers in the Civil 
War. 

Every candidate named was capable of filling the office for 
which he was named. They were all high grade, highly respected 
citizens. The candidate for Governor, Charles Eckhart, was de- 
scribed by one of the leading dailies of the state as “a strong, 
clean, conscientious man and a fine gentleman. He is a business 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 309 


man of the highest character and an honest and vigorous cham- 
pion of the prohibition of the liquor traffic.” 

This brief and inadequate description is to give a suggestion of 
the type of combined business, inspiration, political idealism and 
consecration which characterized the many state conventions 
through the years. 

During that year there was a district evangelist organizer in 
every Congressional district in Indiana devoting his entire time 
to party work. Besides, there were one hundred and thirty vol- 
unteer speakers who offered to make at least one speech a week 
in their own or an adjoining county free of charge aside from 
traveling expenses. Asa result of this plan of district evangelists 
Indiana in the election of 1900 made a gain of 10,662 votes over 
1896, the largest gain made in any state. 


THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF I900 


The national convention of 1900 held in Chicago in the large 
First Regiment Armory was declared by those who had attended 
many conventions to have surpassed all its predecessors in en- 
thusiasm, energy and power. 

There were seven hundred and thirty-five regularly elected 
delegates from thirty-seven states and thousands of visitors. 

Chairman Stewart in a brief address in calling the convention 
to order evoked cheers and applause when he declared: 


We are set for the overthrow of the legalized dramshop in 
America. We intend that the American saloon shall be outlawed. 
On that account we have withdrawn ourselves from the other 
political parties and have banded ourselves together as Prohibition- 
ists. We are agreed that the saloon ought to die and die quickly 
and upon that declaration we are ready to face the world. 


The convention was welcomed to Chicago by John H. Hill, a 
loyal Prohibition attorney-at-law. He invited to the platform 
those who had attended the first convention which had been held 
in Chicago in 1869, thirty-one years before. There were four- 
teen present who had attended that convention. 

After giving a special welcome to leaders who had rendered 
distinguished service and mentioning different groups deserving 


special honor, he paid a most deserving tribute to the rank and 
MiG Viteeadill"said: 


Friends, there is one more I must mention. Possibly your cheer- 
ing has been tinged with something of local pride in some instances, 


310 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


but this time we sweep away all the local pride, make it a universal 
cheer. He is the man in the convention who is not very well known; 
he may not be known out of his home county, certainly not out of 
his home state; he has never had his deeds or virtues exploited by 
the daily press; he has never stood upon the platform and had the 
crowds cheer him on to greater works; yet that man has been faith- 
ful; he has stood in his position in his neighborhood for long years; 
he has given his time, his money and his best efforts gladly; he has 
championed our principles and has taken all the rebuffs and sneers 
that have been thrown upon him; he has made every sacrifice neces- 
sary and stood firm as a rock. You want to know who he is? Why, 
friends, that description will apply to at least a thousand in this con- 
vention today, and it is to you, the backbone of the party—the rank 
and file, the ’69ers, and those who have for ten, twenty, and thirty 
years given the best of your lives for the cause—it is to you that we 
extend our most cordial welcome. 


Former National Chairman Samuel Dickie was chosen both 
temporary and permanent Chairman of the convention and the 
Secretaries were Alonzo E. Wilson and R. S. Cheves. 

Dr. Dickie said in part: 


This great problem, whether we view it on the financial side or 
on the moral side or on the purely political side, is a problem by 
the side of which every other issue dwindles into absolute insig- 
nificHnice es 3. | 

Do we view the problem solely from the standpoint of a financier ? 
Then the tariff question vanishes, the currency question cuts no 
figure, the problems of trusts and monopolies are insignificant. I 
stand here today to say to you that if you will give us a sober people, 
if you will banish the saloon, if you will save us from the robbery 
on the highway of trade, if you will deliver us from the aggressive 
power of this pirate on the sea of commerce, the American people 
will leap forward into an era of prosperity, the like of which no 
other legislation can give. 

When we view the great problems before the country from the 
standpoint of the moralist and of the Christian reformer, what other 
problem dares to present itself by the side of this? It overshadows, 
it outweighs, it obscures them all. The home and the church and 
the causes of social purity, all that go to make our Christian civi- 
lization, all are threatened by this gigantic wrong, and yet the Demo- 
cratic party stands for its continuance and the Republican party 
stands for its perpetuation, and we alone dare to lift up our voices, 
dare throw down the gauntlet and defy its power. 

Do we view this question from the standpoint, not of the financier, 
not of the moralist, not of the Christian reformer, but from the 
standpoint of the political reformer? We find that the most power- 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 311 


ful force today dictating and controlling the public policy of the 
nation is the organized liquor traffic. 

We stand before the nation as a great national convention to 
declare that the American people in their organized capacity are 
guilty of a wicked complicity with a nefarious business that de- 
bauches and corrupts our citizenship. | 


He charged the administration with responsibility for the army 
grogshop, for debauchery in the Philippines, for the repeal of 
prohibition in Alaska, and charged it with insulting the church 
and temperance people in order to curry favor with the rum 
power. He further charged the administration with using the 
United States consuls to gather information to aid American 
brewers and distillers. 

The platform was confined to the single issue but it was one 
of the longest and yet one of the most incisive platforms the Party 
ever had. Like Dr. Dickie’s keynote speech it severely arraigned 
the administration. It also enunciated the philosophy of party 
government and aligned the voters in two groups, perpetuationists 
and Prohibitionists. The platform was largely the production of 
the Secretary of the Committee on Resolutions, Prof. A. A. 
Hopkins, for many years one of the leading thinkers and writers 
of the Party who had a large part in framing a number of plat- 
forms both in New York and in the nation. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION PLATFORM, I9Q00 


Preamble 


The National Prohibition Party, in convention assembled, at 
Chicago, June 27 and 28, 1900, acknowledging Almighty God as the 
supreme source of all just government; realizing that this republic 
was founded upon Christian principles and can endure only as it 
embodies justice and righteousness, and asserting that all authority 
should seek the best good of all the governed, to this end wisely pro- 
hibiting what is wrong and permitting only what is right, hereby 
records and proclaims: 

Definition of Party and Arraignment of Parties 

I. We accept and assert the definition given by Edmund Burke, 
that “a party is a body of men joined together for the purpose of 
promoting, by their joint endeavor, the national interest upon some 
particular principle upon which they are all agreed.” We declare 
that there is no principle now advocated, by any other party, which 
could be made a fact in government with such beneficent moral and 
material results as the principle of prohibition, applied to the bev- 
erage liquor traffic; that the national interest could be promoted in 


312 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


no other way so surely and widely as by its adoption and assertion 
through a national policy, and the cooperation therein of every state, 
forbidding the manufacture, sale, exportation, importation and 
transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes; that 
we stand for this as the only one principle, proposed by any party 
anywhere, for the settlement of a question greater and graver than 
any other before the American people, and involving more pro- 
foundly than any other their moral future, and financial welfare; 
and that all the patriotic citizenship of this country, agreed upon 
this principle, however much disagreement there may be as to minor 
considerations and issues, should stand together at the ballot-box 
from this time forward, until Prohibition is the established policy 
of the United States, with a party in power to enforce it and to 
insure its moral and material benefits. 

We insist that such a party, agreed upon this principle and policy, 
having sober leadership, without any obligation for success to the 
saloon vote and to those demoralizing political combinations of men 
and money now allied therewith and suppliant thereto, could suc- 
cessfully cope with all other and lesser problems of government, in 
legislative halls and in the executive chair, and that it is useless for 
any party to make declarations in its platform as to any questions 
concerning which there may be serious differences of opinion in its 
own membership, and as to which, because of such differences, the 
party could legislate only on a basis of mutual concessions when 
coming into power. 

We submit that the Democratic and Republican parties are alike 
insincere in their assumed hostility to trusts and monopolies. They 
dare not and do not attack the most dangerous of them all, the 
liquor power. So long as the saloon debauches the citizen and 
breeds the purchasable voter, money will continue to buy its way 
to power. Break down this traffic, elevate manhood, and a sober 
citizenship will find a way to control dangerous combinations of 
capital. 

We propose as a first step in the financial problems of the nation 
to save more than a billion of dollars every year, now annually 
expended to support the liquor traffic and to demoralize our people. 
When that is accomplished, conditions will have so improved that 
with a clearer atmosphere the country can address itself to the 
questions as to the kind and quantity of currency needed. 


The Issue Presented 


2. We reaffirm as true indisputably the declaration of William 
Windom when Secretary of the Treasury in the Cabinet of Presi- 
dent Arthur, that “considered socially, financially, politically or 
morally, the licer.sed liquor traffic is or ought to be the overwhelm- 
ing issue in American politics,” and that “the destruction of this 
iniquity stands next on the calendar of the world’s progress.” We 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 3138 


hold that the existence of our party presents this issue squarely 
to the American people, and lays upon them the responsibility of 
choice between liquor parties, dominated by distillers and brewers, 
with their policy of saloon perpetuation, breeding waste, wicked- 
ness, woe, pauperism, taxation, corruption and crime, and our one 
party of patriotic and moral principle, with a policy which defends 
it from domination by corrupt bosses and which insures it forever 
against the blighting control of saloon politics. 

We face with sorrow, shame and fear the awful fact that this 
liquor traffic has a grip on our government, municipal, state and 
national, through the revenue system and saloon sovereignty, which 
no other party dares to dispute; a grip which dominates the party 
now in power, from caucus to Congress, from policeman to Presi- 
dent, from the rumshop to the White House; a grip which compels 
the Chief Executive to consent that law shall be nullified in behalf 
of the brewer, that the canteen shall curse our army and spread 
intemperance across the seas, and that our flag shall wave as a 
symbol of partnership at home and abroad, between this government 
and the men who defy and defile it for their unholy gain. 


The President Arraigned 


3. We charge upon President McKinley, who was elected to his 
high office by appeals to Christian sentiment and patriotism almost 
unprecedented and by a combination of moral influences never be- 
fore seen in this country, that, by his conspicuous example as a 
wine-drinker at public banquets and as a wine-serving host in the 
White House, he has done more to encourage the liquor business, 
to demoralize the temperance habits of young men, and to bring 
Christian practices and requirements into disrepute, than any other 
President this republic ever had. We further charge upon President 
McKinley responsibility for the army canteen, with all its dire brood 
of disease, immorality, sin and death, in this country, in Cuba, in 
Porto Rico and the Philippines; and we insist that by his attitude 
concerning the canteen, and his apparent contempt for the vast 
number of petitions and petitioners protesting against it, he has 
outraged and insulted the moral sentiment of this country, in such 
a manner, and to such a degree, as calls for its righteous uprising 
and his indignant and effective rebuke. 

We challenge denial of the fact that our Chief Executive, as 
commander-in-chief of the military forces of the United States, at 
any time prior to or since March 2, 1899, could have closed every 
army saloon, called a canteen, by executive order, as President 
Hayes in effect did before him, and should have closed them for 
the same reason that actuated President Hayes; we assert that the 
act of Congress, passed March 2, 1899, forbidding the sale of liquor, 
“in any post exchange or canteen,” by any “officer or private sol- 
dier” or by “any other person on any premises used for military 


314 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


purposes in the United States,” was and is as explicit an act of 
prohibition as the English language can frame; we declare our 
solemn belief that the Attorney-General of the United States in 
his interpretation of that law, and the Secretary of War in his ac- 
ceptance of that interpretation and his refusal to enforce the law, 
were and are guilty of treasonable nullification thereof, and that 
President McKinley, through his assent to and indorsement of such 
interpretation and refusal on the part of officials appointed by and 
responsible to him, shares responsibility in their guilt; and we 
record our conviction that a new and serious peril confronts our 
country, in the fact that its President, at the behest of the beer 
power, dare and does abrogate a law of Congress, through subordi- 
nates removable at will by him and whose acts become his, and thus 
virtually confesses that laws are to be administered or to be nullified 
in the interest of a law-defying business, by an administration under 
mortgage to such business for support. 


Foreign Liquor Policy Condemned 


4. We deplore the fact that an administration of this republic, 
claiming the right and power to carry our flag across seas and to 
conquer and annex new territory, should admit its lack of power to 
prohibit the American saloon on subjugated soil, or should openly 
confess itself subject to liquor sovereignty under that flag. We 
are humiliated, exasperated and grieved, by the evidence, painfully 
abundant, that this administration’s policy of expansion is bearing 
so rapidly its first fruits of drunkenness, insanity and crime under 
the hothouse sun of the tropics; and when the president of the first 
Philippine commission says: “It was unfortunate that we intro- 
duced and established the saloon there to corrupt the natives and to 
exhibit the vices of our race,” we charge the inhumanity and un- 
christianity of this act upon the administration of William McKinley 
and upon the party which elected and would perpetuate the same. 

5. We declare that the only policy that the government of the 
United States can of right uphold as to the liquor traffic, under 
the national Constitution, upon any territory under the military or 
civil control of that government, is the policy of prohibition; that 
“to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the 
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the bless- 
ings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” as the Constitution 
provides, the liquor traffic must neither be sanctioned nor tolerated, 
and that the revenue policy which makes our government a partner 
with distillers and brewers and barkeepers is a disgrace to our civi- 
lization, an outrage upon humanity, and a crime against God. 

We condemn the present administration at Washington because 
it has repealed the prohibitory law in Alaska, and has given over 
the partly civilized tribes there to be the prey of the American grog- 
shop; and because it has entered upon a license policy in our new 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 315 


possessions by incorporating the same in the recent act of Congress 
in the code of laws for the government of the Hawaiian Islands. 

We call general attention to the fearful fact that exportation of 
liquors from the United States to the Philippine Islands increased 
in value from $337 in 1898 to $467,198 in the first ten months of 
the fiscal year ending June 39, 1900; and that while our exportation 
of liquors to Cuba never reached $30,000 a year, previous to Ameri- 
can occupation of that island, our exports of such liquors to Cuba, 
during the fiscal year of 1899, reached the sum of $620,855. 


Call to Moral and Christian Citizenship 


6. One great religious body (the Baptist) having truly declared 
of the liquor traffic “that it has no defensible right to exist, that it 
can never be reformed, and that it stands condemned by ‘its un- 
righteous fruits as a thing unchristian, un-American, and perilous 
utterly to every interest in life’: another great religious body (the 
Methodist) having as truly asserted and reiterated that “no political 
party has a right to expect, nor should it receive, the votes of Chris- 
tian men so long as it stands committed to the license policy, or 
refuses to put itself on record in an attitude of open hostility to 
the saloon”; other great religious bodies having made similar de- 
liverances, in language plain and unequivocal, as to the liquor traffic 
and the duties of Christian citizenship in opposition thereto; and the 
fact being plain and undeniable that the Democratic party stands for 
license, the saloon and the canteen, while the Republican party, in 
policy and in administration, stands for the canteen, the saloon and 
the revenue therefrom, we declare ourselves justified in expecting 
that Christian voters everywhere shall cease their complicity with 
the liquor curse by refusing to uphold a liquor party, and shall unite 
themselves with the only party which upholds the prohibition policy, 
and which for nearly thirty years has been the faithful defender 
of the church, the state, the home and the school, against the Saloon, 
its expanders and perpetuators, their actual and persistent foes. 

We insist that no difference in belief, as to any other question 
or concern of government, should stand in the way of such a union 
of moral and Christian citizenship as we hereby invite for the 
speedy settlement of this paramount moral, industrial, financial, and 
political issue, which our party presents; and we refrain from de- 
claring ourselves upon all minor matters, as to which differences of 
opinion may exist, that hereby we may offer to the American people 
a platform so broad that all can stand upon it who desire to see 
sober citizenship actually sovereign over allied hosts of evil, sin and 
crime, in a government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people. 

We declare that there are but two real parties, today, concerning 
the liquor traffic—perpetuationists and Prohibitionists; and that pa- 
triotism, Christianity, and every interest of genuine and of pure 


316 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


democracy, besides the loyal demands of our common humanity, 
require the speedy union, in one solid phalanx at the ballot-box, of 
all who oppose the liquor traffic’s perpetuation, and who covet 
endurance for this republic. 


The most exciting feature of the convention was the friendly 
contest for the nomination for President between the supporters 
of John G. Woolley and those of Silas C. Swallow. 

One of the ablest nominating speeches ever made in any con- 
vention was that by Homer L. Castle nominating Dr. Swallow. 
At the mention of the name of Swallow there was a great demon- 
stration lasting many minutes which came near stampeding the 
convention. It was a tremendous tribute to Dr. Swallow. If 
Mr. Woolley had not been so widely known as an appealing 
orator, and if he had not been a proprietor of the leading national 
organ and had not been placed in nomination by the National 
Chairman it is likely that Dr. Swallow would have been nomi- 
nated. As it was the vote was 380 for Woolley to 320 for 
Swallow. Hale Johnson was placed in nomination but he with- 
drew his name just before the balloting began. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. John G. Woolley was the outstanding Prohibi- 
tion orator of a period of great orators. He had a peculiarly 
powerful appeal because he himself had been a victim of alcohol. 

Born in Ohio in 1850, he was graduated from Ohio Wesleyan 
University in 1871. He was distinguished for his oratorical 
ability in his college days. The story is told that when he de- 
livered his commencement oration, a green country boy, who hap- 
pened to be listening to the exercises, was so stirred and stimu- 
lated by Woolley’s oration that he determined then and there to 
obtain a college education. That boy became Dr. Gunsaulus, 
of Chicago, one of the greatest pulpit orators America has pro- 
duced. When Dr. Gunsaulus met Mr. Woolley twenty-five years 
later the doctor repeated the peroration delivered by Woolley at 
his graduation from Ohio Wesleyan. 

Mr. Woolley studied law at the University of Michigan, was 
admitted to the bar in Illinois, rose rapidly in his profession, 
removed to Minnesota, was elected state’s attorney at Minneapolis 
and was said to command the highest fees received by any lawyer 
in the state of Minnesota. 

But the liquor habit had gotten a hold on him as a result of a 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 317 


doctor’s advice to take whisky and cod liver oil for threatened 
lung trouble. By 1887 he had sunk to the depths of a common 
drunkard, having lost self-respect, professional practice, friends, 
everything. Finally, after many unsuccessful efforts to reform, 
coming under the influence of Christian friends in New York, 
he was converted on January 31, 1888, and soon launched out 
into active Christian and Prohibition party work. 

He had a marvelous and unsurpassed command of the English 
language and was on the lecture platform almost continuously. 
Since 1888 he had averaged a speech a day. His message had 
been primarily to the church. 

At the closing session of the convention he made a short 
address in which he said: 


For a dozen years and more, the whole burden of my public work 
has been that the church of Jesus Christ ought to take a straight 
look at the liquor traffic; and I have had such confidence in her, 
and have such confidence in her tonight as to believe that once she 
sees this accursed thing she will crush it at the following election. 


A paragraph from one of his speeches in the campaign of 1900 
inadequately suggests his message: 


This is the greatest issue that Christendom has ever faced—not 
the liquor traffic, but the political infidelity that underwrites it for 
an annual premium in votes and gold. It was issue enough, in all 
conscience, for any year or any epoch simply to outlaw this plague 
and scourge of the earth, this ceaseless panic, this measureless loss, 
this corrosive sorrow, this deadly wrong, this unremitting fever, this 
everlasting famine, this sin-yeast, this flying pollen of insanity, this 
midwife of crime, this abortionist of virtue, this assassin of char- 
acter, this damnation of the innocent. Compared to that, the great- 
est, broadest, wisest platform ever framed upon a social incident, 
such as tariff, money, trusts, expansion and the like, was frivolous 
and puerile demagogy. But as the heavens are high above the earth, 
the present issue is beyond the terms of any merchandise or the | 
vicissitudes of any market, pestilence or war. It is no less a thing 
than this, the nomination and election by the vote of a free people, 
of a simple, certain, eternal, spiritual standard in the politics of the 
great republic, in lieu of the mixed, variable, temporary, fleshly, 
beastly atheism of this present time. 


For Vice-President. Henry B, Metcalf, of Rhode Island, was 
nominated over T. R. Carskadon, of West Virginia, and E. L. 
Eaton, of lowa. 

He was one of Rhode Island’s best known and most respected 
business men, having been connected with many manufacturing, 


318 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


commercial and financial enterprises. He had served for five 
years as president of the National Convention of his church 
denomination, the Universalist, and was president of the corpora- 
tion of Tufts College. 

He had been one of the leaders in the non-partisan movement 
which had carried prohibition in Rhode Island in 1886 and in the 
same year was prominent in organizing the anti-saloon Repub- 
lican movement. Tor over a year he wrote the leading political 
editorials for the New York Mail and Express, which was the 
organ of that movement. After the Rhode Island law had been 
sacrificed by the treason of Republican leaders he twice helped to 
organize local parties in that state to obtain law enforcement or 
the reestablishment of the law. But these efforts proved in- 
effectual. Thus through a series of political experiences he was 
driven into the Prohibition party which he joined in the autumn 
of 1889 and was twice its candidate for Governor. He was a 
man of deep conviction, of great reserve power and was a tower 
of strength to the cause. 

The outstanding feature of the campaign was the tour of the 
candidates on a special train by means of which they traveled 
from Dakota and Nebraska in the West to Boston and from 
Minnesota to Tennessee. The plan of the special train campaign 
was evolved by National Chairman Stewart as a means of reach- 
ing and awakening the country. The train, which reached from 
eight to fifteen cities a day, started September 19th and continued 
until election. Prior to that date Mr. Woolley had made a cam- 
paign trip to the Pacific Coast. In all he traveled more than 
23,000 miles and delivered between 450 and 500 addresses. Mr. 
Bryan, who was then the Democratic candidate for the second 
time, had made quite a record as a campaign traveler, when in 
1896 he traveled 18,000 miles, but Mr. Woolley’s record sur- 
passed that of any other candidate in the country’s political 
history. 

Splendid meetings were held and much interest was aroused, 
but the channels of newspaper publicity were not open and there 
was not the breaking away from the old parties that for a time 
seemed likely to occur. 

In the election about two-thirds of the votes lost in the split of 
1896 were regained and the morale was strengthened so that 
within two months following the election about $25,000 was sub- 
scribed by mail for the National Committee for the campaigns 
of tg901 and 1904. One effect of the aggressive campaign of 
1900 was the stimulus which it gave to the passage by Congress 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 319 


of the second anti-canteen law the following winter. The aboli- 
tion of the army saloon was the leading hotly contested fight thus 
far won in Congress and the winning of this victory is now 
regarded as the forerunner of the victory achieved in the adoption 
of the Eighteenth Amendment. 


THE ELECTION OF SHERIFF PEARSON 


The administration of the prohibitory law in Maine by the old 
parties had been for years so poor that even many good people 
had been led to believe that the law could not be enforced. 

The national liquor interests entrenched in other states were 
making Maine a target and continually seeking to send in liquor, 
not merely to increase their sales but especially to discredit pro- 
hibition. They bought up many sheriffs and corrupted politics 
in general. 

Furthermore, by their continued debauchery of a group of 
voters on the one hand, and their propaganda to create prejudice 
against prohibition on the other, they succeeded in maintaining 
a control over a group of mobile voters sufficiently large to make 
their political influence feared. 

The politicians of both old parties continued to cater to this 
group. Back in 1887, Neal Dow, who worked within the Repub- 
lican party as long as he could, said: “We founded a third party 
because we were fooled by the Republican bosses who were run- 
ning the party in the interests of the grogshops while making all 
the while sham professions of devotion to prohibition.” 

In some places the grogshop element almost completely domi- 
nated local politics with the result that lawlessness was rampant. 
Convictions for violations were almost impossible with this ele- 
ment in the saddle. Sometimes the people would become aroused 
and elect a law enforcement sheriff only to find him handicapped 
by a prosecuting attorney who would fail to prosecute or by a 
judge who would fail to give adequate sentences. 

Conditions had gone from bad to worse until tg00 when in 
Cumberland County, in which Portland, the largest city of the 
state, 1s situated, the people elected as sheriff Samuel F. Pearson, 
the Prohibition party candidate. In the campaign the Prohibi- 
tionists showed up the non-enforcement conditions. They ex- 
posed the system by which the Boston brewing companies had 
been paying the sheriff one dollar per barrel for each barrel of 
beer that came into the county. Mr. Pearson, who had been a 
party Prohibitionist for years, having made a ticket of his own 


320 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


when there was no ticket to vote, and who for over twenty years 
had conducted a Gospel Mission for the poor, the needy and the 
fallen, had the respect of the people and received sixty per cent 
of the vote. 

His platform was: “The prohibition law can be enforced. The 
prohibition law ought to be enforced. If elected, God helping 
me, I will enforce the prohibition law.” 

And he did. On the first day of his term of office sixty-one 
rumshops were seized, All of the hotels, and many of the other 
liquor-selling places, knowing he meant business, had already sent 
their liquors away. 

In his law enforcement work he had some very interesting 
experiences with various ingenious devices to escape detection, 
which of themselves were evidence of the efficiency with which 
the law was enforced. In one case the liquor was piped from a 
closed upper room, a room which could be entered only from the 
roof. In another case a jug of whisky containing the supply was 
left under a rocking chair, with curtains around the bottom, and 
upon the chair continuously sat an old lady eighty-three years of 
age claiming to be paralyzed. Twenty boxes marked hardware 
were found each to hold a tank containing six gallons of whisky. 
In other instances liquor was so driven to cover that the selling 
was from canes, bustles and other devices down to little flasks 
holding a gill each. 

The preceding year there had been 277 holders of United 
States liquor tax receipts selling in Portland and there were other 
places without even a federal tax receipt, which were selling as 
kitchen barrooms. Conditions were exceedingly bad. The local 
taxes had gone up from sixteen dollars to over twenty-two dollars 
per thousand. After one year of Sheriff Pearson’s administra- 
tion he turned back into the treasury 40 per cent of the pauper 
fund because it was not needed and for the first time in the 
history of the county it got out of debt and had a considerable 
sum in the treasury notwithstanding some unusual expenditures. 

After six months in office he called on a number of business 
men to inquire how enforcement had affected business. Almost 
universally there had been a decided betterment. One hotel re- 
ported an increase in receipts of $300 to $500 a week. The lead- 
ing boot and shoe dealer reported four more clerks than ever 
before and an increase in trade of 60 per cent, saying he was 
selling the worst men and the worst drunkards in Maine boots 
and shoes every Saturday night. 

After he had been in office a year Sheriff Pearson repeatedly 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 821 


offered a reward of one hundred dollars to anyone who would 
produce evidence that there was a single open saloon or one 
open bar in Portland or in Cumberland county. The reward 
was never taken. So thoroughly had the saloons and even the 
kitchen barrooms been closed that even his enemies were forced 
to concede that a prohibition law could be enforced when it had a 
Prohibition party officer back of it. 

The liquor interests did their utmost to destroy his work. 
They attempted to bribe his deputies and, not sensing his prin- 
ciples, two Boston breweries, through a reformed man who was 
a Democrat as a go-between, offered $35,000 if he would allow 
liquor to come in for one year. They considered that from the 
political standpoint it would be worth that to show that prohibi- 
tion under a Prohibition sheriff would not prohibit. 

It was a great loss to the cause that Sheriff Pearson died before 
the expiration of his term. The Boston Globe said: “Upon the 
monument to be set above his grave ought to be inscribed his 
own words, “The prohibition law can be enforced,’’’ and the 
Boston Journal said: “Sheriff Pearson has answered the old 
question—Does Prohibition prohibit ’—by demonstrating that it 
can be made to prohibit when it has a man behind it.” 

It is now generally recognized that the administration of 
Sheriff Pearson, a party Prohibitionist, not merely demonstrated 
the fact that Prohibition could be made to pronibit, but it ushered 
in a period of better enforcement of the law in Maine. 


THE WORK OF MRS. NATION 


As in Maine so in Kansas there had been a widespread dis- 
regard of prohibition by the existing type of public officers. In 
many places joints were running openly, the officers paying no 
attention to law violations. In the later nineties some of the poli- 
ticians were conspiring how they could bring about the resub- 
mission of prohibition and remove it from the state constitution, 
It was said that many of the leading office-holders were in favor 
of resubmission. 

But about this time Mrs, Carry A. Nation, a plain, earnest, 
deeply religious, motherly woman, who herself had suffered 
greatly from the liquor traffic, having repeatedly appealed in vain 
to the officers, including the sheriff, county attorney, attorney- 
general and even the Governor, to enforce the law and stop the 
ruining of so many husbands and sons, felt called by God to 
herself destroy the illegal joints. She had gone from the lower 


322 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


officers to the Chief Executive of the state and, as she afterward 
wrote: “After appealing to the Governor in vain I found that 
I could go to no other authority on earth.” ° Armed at first with 
bricks and stones and later with a hatchet she smashed bottles, 
plate glass, fixtures and liquor containers, destroying all the liquor 
she could. 

After the first smashing at Kiowa she stood in the street and 
uttered the following challenge: “I have destroyed three of your 
places of business and if I have broken a statute of Kansas put 
me in jail; if 1am not a law-breaker your mayor and councilmen 
are. You must arrest one of us, for if I am not a criminal, they 
are.’ Subsequently she visited a number of places in Kansas 
smashing the saloons and exposing the alliance of the law vio- 
lators and public officials who were promoting the propaganda 
that prohibition was a failure. She was arrested a number of 
times but in Kansas the saloons were outlaws and were not 
entitled to legal protection. So long as only liquor and saloon 
accessories were destroyed she could not be punished. The long- 
est period she had to remain in jail was three weeks in Wichita 
after her second smashing and there she was detained because 
of a dastardly scheme of the local officials who had the jail 
quarantined through a false charge that another prisoner had 
smallpox. The officers sought to have her declared insane and 
newspapers over the country generally misrepresented and ridi- 
culed her, but in time her sincerity and earnestness were 
recognized. 

Mrs. Nation’s work succeeded in arousing the public conscience. 
Many of the old type of officers were ousted, better enforcement 
was obtained in Kansas and resubmission was prevented. She 
undoubtedly did much to save Kansas from the loss of its pro- 
hibition law, or at least nullification, at a critical period in that 
state. 


THE PROHIBITION ALLIANCES 


In 1901 following the plan devised by National Chairman 
Stewart the Party began the promotion of the organization of 
Prohibition Alliances in local communities all over the country. 

The Prohibition Alliance was a local organization of the Party. 
Provision was made for meetings at least once a month and the 
National Committee supplied the programs, usually composed of 
short, stirring addresses by men prominent in the Party, supple- 

3 The Life of Carry A. Nation, p. 135. 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 323 


mented by songs, recitations and sometimes special features. 
This insured a worth-while message whether there was capable 
local talent or not. 

Another part of the Alliance plan was a system of share dues 
by which a member could pay dues on any desired number of 
shares of five cents each per month. Of the sums thus raised a 
certain portion went to the National Committee, a portion to the 
state committee and the remainder to local work. 

Within the next three years over eighteen hundred local 
alliances were organized and it was undoubtedly the best system 
of local organization which the Party ever put in operation. 


OTHER RELATED AUXILIARY ORGANIZATIONS 


An organization which performed valuable service for the cause 
was the Young People’s Prohibition League which was started in 
New York City in 1897. 

Its program was to advance the prohibition cause among the 
young people. It was pledged to support the principle of total 
abstinence for the individual and prohibition, with a party behind 
it, for the state. 

While its membership was confined to a few cities chiefly 
within the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 
it exerted an influence, chiefly around New York City, which 
continued for a score of years. In addition to holding meetings 
to enlist and educate young people, it held many street meetings. 

Another organization, largely confined to Rochester, New 
York, but whose activities were watched with pride by the Pro- 
hibitionists, was the Prohibition Union of Christian Men founded 
in 1899 by Clinton N. Howard, known as the Little Giant of the 
American Platform. Its watchword was: “In the name of Jesus 
(Christ as King, the liquor traffic must die.” 

Hundreds of meetings were held, addressed by the ablest pro- 
hibition speakers in the nation. 

In the course of a quarter of a century, Mr. Howard had the 
unapproached record of having delivered in his home city of 
Rochester nearly 1,200 prohibition addresses. 


THE INTERCOLLEGIATE PROHIBITION ASSOCIATION 


The Intercollegiate Prohibition Association was closely allied 
with the Party because it was the Prohibitionists who initiated 
it and carried it on through many years and also because a large 


324 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


proportion of thoughtful minds who made a serious study of the 
political aspects of the liquor question came to accept the philoso- 
phy of the Prohibition party. 

The Intercollegiate Prohibition Association had been first or- 
ganized at Cleveland in 1887 by representatives from forty-four 
institutions of learning. It held a national oratorical contest in 
connection with the Prohibition National Convention of 1888, 
but for the next four years was not active nationally. It was 
reorganized at a meeting of college men held in connection with 
the Prohibition National Convention of 1892, the initiative hav- 
ing been taken by students of the University of Michigan at the 
head of whom was A. W. Augur. Fletcher Dobyns, of Oberlin 
College, served as organizer and by 1893 organizations had been 
formed in 146 colleges. Again there was a decline owing to the 
lack of field organizers and the rapid change of the college popu- 
lation. With the split in the party in 1896 and the generally dis- 
couraging situation the college movement also suffered. 

In 1899-1900 with the help of the Prohibition National Com- 
mittee renewed efforts were made and from that time on there 
was a rapid and continuous growth until within a few years it 
became second only to the college department of the Young Men’s 
and Young Women’s Christian Association, the largest student 
movement among American colleges and universities. Its officers 
and secretaries spoke in nearly 400 higher institutions of learn- 
ing, in most of which local Prohibition Leagues were established. 

Through many years, especially from 1902 to 1917, when the 
colleges became disorganized owing to the students leaving to 
enter the World War, the major emphasis was placed upon a 
systematic study of the liquor problem, especially in its social, 
economic and political aspects. ‘The Association prepared outline 
courses of study for both voluntary classes and curriculum 
courses. The titles of some of the study courses outlined in the 
Intercollegiate Statesman from 1903 to 1916 were: Political 
Phases of Prohibition; The Social Demands for Prohibition; 
The Solution of the Liquor Problem: A Comparison of Methods; 
Government and the Liquor Traffic; Social Welfare and the 
Liquor Problem; The Relation of Liquor to Other Public Prob- 
lems; Vital Factors in the Liquor Problem Today; and National 
Prohibition, a Series of Studies. 

By 1916 more than one hundred colleges and universities had 
placed courses on the liquor problem in their curricula with reg- 
ular college credit. In all but two or three of these institutions 
this was done as the result of the initiative of the Intercollegiate 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 325 


Prohibition Association and in most of them the professors either 
followed the courses outlined by the Association or outlined 
special courses in cooperation with the expert officers of the Asso- 
ciation. In addition to the credit courses, through many years 
there were voluntary classes in many colleges. 

The Association conducted the most extensive system of col- 
lege oratorical contests in the country, with original orations upon 
prohibition, leading through local college, state, interstate and 
national contests to what was regarded as the highest honors in 
American college oratory. It was estimated that at least ten thou- 
sand original orations were delivered from 1900 to 1917. 

It furnished students for summer campaign work for the party 
through many summer vacations. In 1901 twenty-four students 
spent their summers working for the party in Ohio. Their work 
helped to replace the party on the ballot and drew the fire of the 
liquor interests. The Wine and Spirit News referring to the 
college men’s campaign said: “This is a lesson that should be 
taken home by every man interested in his business and who 
believes in protecting himself.” 

In 1908 there were over one hundred and forty-nine in summer 
prohibition work. For several years, beginning in 1904, each 
year a prohibition training school was held to train the college 
men for the specific work before them. In the later statewide 
referendum campaign students participated literally by the 
hundreds. 

The Intercollegiate Prohibition Association during its history, 
down to the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment, enlisted 
scores of thousands of college and university men and women, 
those naturally expected to become the leaders and molders of 
public opinion, for service and leadership in the prohibition move- 
ment. One of its slogans was: 


“As go the colleges today 
fe 4 9 
So goes the nation tomorrow. 


A number of the later prominent leaders of the prohibition 
movement were enlisted and began their activities as a result of 
its work. : 

The writer had the privilege of serving as its president from 
1899 to 1908 and from 1912 to 1920, the intervening period 
having served as treasurer. Mr. Harry S. Warner has served 
most faithfully as its secretary from 1900 to the present time, 
having devoted continuous and sacrificial service for more than 


326 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


a quarter of acentury. Mr. Virgil G. Hinshaw, the third of the 
trio who began to travel among the colleges in 1900, served as 
president from 1908 to IgI2. 

In 1919 it began to extend its activities to the universities of 
Europe with world prohibition as its objective. 


NATIONAL CHAIRMAN STEWART ELECTED TO LEGISLATURE 


In the election of 1902 the Prohibitionists of the country were 
cheered by the election of their capable National Chairman to the 
Illinois Legislature from the Hyde Park district of Chicago. 

He served with great distinction in that body. On the day 
when party nominations for the United States Senate were made 
Mr. Stewart nominated John G. Woolley as the Prohibition can- 
didate and took the opportunity to give an eloquent exposition 
of the principles of the Prohibition party. The House and gal- 
leries were packed, most of the political leaders of the state being 
present. He was frequently interrupted with vociferous applause 
and at the close of his half-hour address he was given an ovation. 
The daily papers featured his address as the outstanding event of 
a day of speech-making, and former Speaker Sherman, who later 
became a United States Senator, declared it was “‘the finest and 
most eloquent speech I ever heard in the Illinois Assembly.” ‘The 
address was widely circulated under the title ‘Party Fidelity.” 

Mr. Stewart in the Legislature had a prominent part in fram- 
ing important measures affecting the welfare of the people. 


THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF 1904 


The 1904 convention was held at Indianapolis. Homer L. 
Castle, of Pennsylvania, was Temporary Chairman and A. G. 
Wolfenbarger, of Nebraska, was Permanent Chairman. W. G. 
Calderwood, of Minnesota, was temporary and permanent 
Secretary. 

In attendance and enthusiasm it was about on a par with the 
earlier conventions. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. Dr. Silas C. Swallow, of Pennsylvania, was 
nominated by acclamation. He was a man of great ability and 
unlimited courage. Still living, no candidate has been more loved 
and respected for his services to the cause than Dr. Swallow. 

He had served for many years as a Methodist minister and for 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 327 


four years as presiding elder. For eleven years he had been 
editor of the Pennsylvania Methodist. 

In 1897 after the burning of the Pennsylvania State Capitol 
he published an exposé of the political thieves of the state. For 
this he was prosecuted for libel, tried and acquitted, being vindi- 
cated at every point. 

Nominated for State Treasurer, the highest office on the Pro- 
hibition ticket that year, he made a terrific onslaught upon the 
corrupt political machine, his slogan being, ‘Thou shalt not 
steal!’ He polled over 118,000 votes, carrying eleven counties 
including all, save one, in which as an itinerant clergyman he had 
ever lived. The next year, 1898, as candidate for Governor he 
received nearly 133,000 votes, the largest vote yet polled in any 
state for a Prohibition nominee. 

Homer L. Castle in placing him in nomination for President at 
the 1900 convention eloquently described him: 


There lives in the city of Harrisburg, upon the banks of the 
Susquehanna, a man six feet tall and every inch backbone. To 
what may I liken him? For steadfastness, I might liken him to 
the giant oak which holds even amidst the storms which sweep 
through its great branches; but the figure is tame, for the oak 
stands because it is held, whereas he holds himself amidst storms 
that few men would dare to face. For grandeur and magnificence 
of character, I might liken him to a great mountain, lifting its 
shaggy head above cloud and rain, whose base rests upon the foun- 
dations laid by the Creator, and whose summit is glory-covered with 
perpetual snows; but the figure is tame, for while it is true of him 
that he rests upon the everlasting foundations, and his head is cov- 
ered with honor and truth, yet the mountain is a mere pillar of 
earth, and he is a thinking, walking embodiment of the grandeur 
of God-touched immortality. For persistence of purpose, I might 
liken him to the coral which toils with unslackened labor through 
years and years of seemingly useless endeavor until the coral reef 
lifts its head above the waves and makes a footing for tempest- 
tossed or shipwrecked mariners; but the figure is tame, for while 
it is true of him that day and night, winter and summer, in season 
and out of season, he has toiled, even when it did seem that no 
progress was being made, that a safe resting-place may be made in 
this country of ours for the tempest-tossed and shipwrecked vic- 
tims of the ocean of drink which surges and rolls everywhere, the 
coral works in the dark and from instinct rather than purpose, while 
he has and does work under the light which comes from the Sun 
of the Universe, and with a purpose coincident with the thought of 
the world’s Redeemer, to lift man above the waves of passion and 
appetite to the unmoving ground of righteousness. 


328 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


He has probably done more than any other living man to dethrone 
Quay and thus to bring under condemnation all the untrue, dis- 
honest, corrupt political trickism of which the ignoble ex-Senator 
stands as the exponent and representative. 

You want a man to be your leader who shall be as straight and 
tall as the young Saul. He must be as fearless and unsparing in 
the denunciation of sin in high places as was John the Baptist. He 
must be as untiring and persistent as a Paul. He must be as ready 
for sacrifice as a Stephen. He must be as sweet-tempered as a 
Melanchthon. He must be as pure, clean and noble-minded as a 
John Wesley. In a word he must be such a one as shows by 
is life that he is an act of God, his mind a thought, his life a 
breath of divinity. Such a man, ladies and gentlemen of the con- 
vention, I have the honor to present to you in the person of Silas 


C. Swallow. 


And Dr. Swallow deserved every word. 

For Vice-President. George W. Carroll, of Texas, was nomi- 
nated over I. H. Amos of Oregon. He was one of the most 
successful men and most prominent philanthropists of the South. 
He was largely interested in the oil industry and in rice mills as 
well as in rice and timber lands. He was an active member of 
the Baptist Church, proprietor of the Baptist Standard, president 
of the Y.M.C.A., and a contributor of large sums to education 
and to various charitable enterprises. Two years before he had 
been a candidate for Governor of Texas. 

The platform was moderately expanded to take in several sub- 
jects other than prohibition, in contrast to the two preceding 
platforms which were limited to the single issue. The platform 
of 1904 was largely written by William P. F. Ferguson, then 
editor of the Citizen of Harriman, Tennessee. Although the 
platform was considered by the Committee on Resolutions for 
many hours it was finally adopted with but few changes, sub- 
stantially as Mr. Ferguson had drafted it. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION PLATFORM, 1904. 


The Prohibition party in National Convention assembled, at In- 
dianapolis, June 30, 1904, recognizing that the chief end of all 
government is the establishment of those principles of righteousness 
and justice which have been revealed to men as the will of the Ever- 
Living God, desiring His blessing upon our national life, and be- 
lieving in the perpetuation of the high ideals of government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people, established by our fathers, 
makes the following declaration of principles and purposes: 


THE PARTY RENAISSANCE 329 


1. The widely prevailing system of the licensed and legalized 
sale of alcoholic beverages is so ruinous to individual interests, so 
inimical to public welfare, so destructive of national wealth and so 
subversive of the rights of great masses of our citizenship, that the 
destruction of the traffic is, and for years has been, the most im- 
portant question in American politics. 

2. We denounce the lack of statesmanship exhibited by the 
leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in their refusal 
to recognize the paramount importance of this question, and the 
cowardice with which the leaders of these parties have courted the 
favor of those whose selfish interests are advanced by the continua- 
tion and augmentation of the traffic, until today the influence of the 
liquor traffic practically dominates national, state and local govern- 
ment throughout the nation. | 

3. We declare the truth, demonstrated by the experience of half 
a century, that all methods of dealing with the liquor traffic which 
recognize its right to exist, in any form, under any system of license 
or tax or regulation, have proved powerless to remove its evils, 
and useless as checks upon its growth, while the insignificant public 
revenues which have accrued therefrom have seared the public con- 
science against a recognition of its iniquity. 

4. We call attention to the fact, proved by the experience of more 
than fifty years, that to secure the enactment and enforcement of 
prohibitory legislation, in which alone lies the hope of the pro- 
tection of the people from the liquor traffic, it is necessary that the 
legislative, executive and judiciary branches of the government 
should be in the hands of a political party in harmony with the Pro- 
hibition principle, and pledged to its embodiment in law and to the 
execution of those laws. 

5. We pledge the Prohibition party, wherever given power by 
the suffrages of the people, to the enactment and enforcement of 
laws prohibiting and abolishing the manufacture, importation, trans- 
portation and sale of alcoholic beverages. 

6. We declare that there is not only no other issue of equal im- 
portance before the American people today, but that the so-called 
issues upon which the Democratic and Republican parties seek to 
divide the electorate of the country are, in large part, subterfuges 
under the cover of which they wrangle for the spoils of office. 

7. Recognizing that the intelligent voters of the country may 
properly ask our attitude on other questions of public concern, we 
declare ourselves in favor of: 

The impartial enforcement of all law. 

The safeguarding of the people’s rights by a rigid application 
of the principles of justice to all combinations and organizations 
of capital and labor. 

The recognition of the fact that the right of suffrage should de- 
pend upon the mental and moral qualifications of the citizen. 


330 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


A more intimate relation between the people and the government, 
by a wise application of the principle of the initiative and referen- 
dum. 

Such changes in our laws as will place tariff schedules in the 
hands of an omni-partisan commission. 

The application of uniform laws for all our country and depend- 
encies. 

The election of United States Senators by vote of the people. 

The extension and honest administration of the civil service laws. 

The safeguarding of every citizen in every place under the gov- 
ernment of the people of the United States, in all the rights guar- 
anteed by the laws and the Constitution. 

International arbitration, and we declare that our nation should 
contribute, in every manner consistent with national dignity, to the 
permanent establishment of peace between all nations. 

The reform of our divorce laws, the final extirpation of polygamy, 
and the total overthrow of the present shameful system of the il- 
legal sanction of the social evil, with its unspeakable traffic in girls, 
by the municipal authorities of almost all our cities. 


In the campaign Dr. Swallow spoke in many states, accom- 
panied on his campaign tour most of the time by Volney B. 
Cushing, one of the leading speakers of the party. Dr. Swallow 
polled a largely increased vote, within a few thousand of the 
highest vote ever cast for the party. 

Bibliographical Note. For references, see close of Chapter 
LX. 


Chapter XIX 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS OF 1908 AND 
1.3 Bip 


At the beginning of 1905 there was a change in the National 
Chairmanship. Charles R. Jones, who for eight years had been 
State Chairman of Pennsylvania, became National Chairman. 

Pennsylvania was electing more local Prohibition party officials 
than any other state. In 1901 Venango county elected a Pro- 
hibition party sheriff as well as other local officials. In 1904 
there were two hundred and five local officers elected in that 
county and in the February, 1905, election the Prohibitionists 
elected 167 local officials scattered in thirteen other counties of 
Pennsylvania. 

The plan used in Venango county came to be known as the 
Venango plan. There an intensive campaign was carried on 
which involved a conditional voter’s pledge. A canvass was 
made of the voters to secure signatures to a pledge agreeing to 
vote for the Prohibition candidates as soon as enough signatures 
would be secured to carry the county, or the district in which the 
plan was worked. John E. Gill and Edward W. Mills were the 
leaders in developing and executing the plan. 

Likewise in other states more Prohibitionists were being elected 
to legislatures and to local offices in the period 1904 to 1906 than 
ever before. 

In Illinois, in 1904, three members of the Legislature were 
elected: Dan R. Sheen, long one of the able and outstanding Pro- 
hibitionists of the nation, who won a remarkable victory in that 
he was elected from the city of Peoria, probably the leading dis- 
tilling center of the world; Alonzo E. Wilson, State Chairman, 
one of the best known Prohibitionists of the country; and Clay 
fF’. Gaumer. Mr, Gaumer was reelected in 1906 and John R. 
Golden and Nicholas L. Johnson were also elected that year. 

In 1905 Oswego county, New York, elected forty-two local 


officials under a modified Venango plan. 
331 


332 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


MINNESOTA “OUT TO WIN’ CAMPAIGN 


In Minnesota, beginning with 1904 for several elections, con- 
centration campaigns were carried on, directed chiefly toward 
the election of members of the Legislature. In 1904 six legis- 
lative districts were chosen as concentration districts and “Out- 
to-Win’”’ campaigns were inaugurated. 

In Minnesota, more than in any other state, use was made 
of college men, trained and enlisted by the Intercollegiate Pro- 
hibition Association. Capable college men were employed as 
organizers, or “gumshoers,” charged with the duty of reaching 
every corner of their districts, precinct by precinct. The first 
year the plan was used, 1904, the legislative vote of the state was 
trebled and one candidate Jacked but sixteen votes and another 
fifty of being elected. 

In the next campaign, 1906, thirty-two college men were put 
into the field as organizers. The vote was increased from 12,000 
to 32,000 and three men were elected to the Legislature and a 
dozen others came close to election. One of the three elected was 
George W. Higgins, the State Chairman. The others elected 
were E. E. Lobeck and T. E. Noble. That year the Party also 
elected Peter Bonde sheriff of Kandiyohi county. 

In 1908 about fifty college men were in the field. The legis- 
lative vote increased from 32,000 to 53,000. Again three men 
were elected to the Legislature. E. E. Lobeck and T. E. Noble 
were reelected, and C. L. Sulerud elected. Sheriff Bonde was 
reelected. Miss Marie Lovsness was elected a county superin- 
tendent of schools and a number of minor officers were elected. 

In 1910 five were elected to the Legislature, including one to 
the Senate. These were Dr. 5. J. Froshaugh to the Senate and 
C. L. Sulerud, A. V. Anderson, George H. Voxland and Rufus 
P. Morton to the House. Sheriff Bonde was reelected for a 
third term and Miss Lovsness was likewise reelected. 

In 1912 efforts were concentrated upon securing a large vote 
for Governor and a 275 per cent gain was made. 

In 1914 seven Prohibitionists were elected to the Legislature. 


THE LINCOLN CHAUTAUQUAS 


In 1906 the Illinois State Prohibition Committee under the 
direction of State Chairman Alonzo E. Wilson inaugurated the 
Lincoln Temperance Chautauqua System. Its purpose was to 
combine instructive and attractive entertainment with the strong- 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 333 


est and most direct platform championship of the prohibition 
cause. 

Each summer season a six-day series of tent meetings, two 
meetings a day, was held in each of one hundred or more com- 
munities, with different speakers and entertainers each day. 

The Chautauquas were very influential in developing and in- 
tensifying sentiment. Following the first season Illinois polled 
the largest Prohibition vote in its history. Out of the one hun- 
dred and six towns in which Chautauquas were held in 1907, 
ninety-nine voted dry at the spring elections of 1908. 

By the close of the fourth season, in 1909, the report covering 
the four years stated that there had been an aggregate attendance 
of two million, there had been six thousand different rallies, 
entertainments and special services, twenty-five hundred days of 
consecutive public meetings, and four hundred six-day sessions, 
reaching practically every county in the state. The system was 
later incorporated separate from the State Committee, expanded, 
extended to other states and continued until the United States 
entered the World War. It was an important factor in helping 
to roll up the majority for prohibition in West Virginia in 1912. 

In addition to Illinois and Minnesota there were at least five 
other states where outstanding Prohibitionists were elected to 
the legislatures in 1906. These included the Rev. Elisha Bias 
in West Virginia; John B, Lewis in Massachusetts, who through 
manly years was one of the most prominent and active Pro- 
hibitionists of that state; Samuel Christian jn Pennsylvania, long 
known as a radical Prohibitionist of Frankford; William Ingalls 
in Connecticut, a member of the State Executive Committee, and 
A. J. Pettigrew in Florida. Some of these also had independent 
or other minority party support. 

In addition to these, in two or three other states old party tem- 
perance men were elected because of having received the Pro- 
hibition nomination in addition to that of their own party. 

It is significant that the increasingly widespread election of party 
Prohibitionists to legislatures, succeeding as it did the increase 
in the Prohibition vote of 1904, was followed by a general in- 
crease in anti-liquor legislation, particularly by concessions in the 


form of affording freer opportunities for the local outlawing of 
the saloon. 


PROHIBITION IN GEORGIA, I907 


The passage of a state prohibitory law by Georgia in August, 
1907, marks the beginning of a new, or third, prohibition wave, 


334 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the first having been in the fifties and the second in the eighties. 
Not since 1889 had a state adopted prohibition. Meanwhile the 
laws had been lost in Iowa, South Dakota, Vermont and New 
Hampshire. Only three prohibition states were remaining, 
Maine, Kansas and North Dakota. 

Within nine months, by May, 1908, Georgia was followed by 
Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina. ‘Tennessee 
passed a statewide law in 1909. 

In the southern states in 1907 and 1908 the movement had 

nany of the characteristics of the earlier movement of the fifties. 
The laws were secured as the result of a great moral uprising. 
The people were determined to be rid of the saloons. Many of 
the counties had previously voted out the saloons. In Georgia, 
out of one hundred and forty-six counties, one hundred and 
twenty-five were already legally dry. But the etiorts to solve the 
problem by local option had not been successful. The wet coun- 
‘ties were “slopping over,’ as the expression was, on the dry 
counties and the people sought a remedy in state prohibition. 

Furthermore, notably in Georgia, there had been a number of 
outstanding moral leaders who through many years had been 
advocates of state and national prohibition. The state was be- 
ginning to reap the results of their seed sowing. 

Notable among the party Prohibitionists had been the Rev. 
Sam Jones, the noted evangelist, and Walter B. Hill, who had 
served as President of the Georgia Bar Association and also as 
Chancellor of the University of Georgia. These two with Henry 
W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, a southern hero 
who had been a leader in Atlanta’s prohibition fight in 1887, were 
fittingly remembered at the celebration following the victory of 
1907. Mrs. Mary Harris Armour, President of the Georgia 
W. C. T. U., and Hon. Seaborn Wright were the outstanding 
leaders in obtaining the legislation of 1907. 


INDIANA COURT DECISIONS 


In 1907 there were two court decisions in Indiana which 
attracted wide attention. One was by Judge Samuel R. Artman 
who, in the case of Soltau vs. Young, in the Circuit Court of 
Boone county, declared the saloon license statute of Indiana to be 
unconstitutional because illegal under the common law. 

Judge Artman quoted a number of decisions of the higher 
courts to the effect that, in the absence of a statute legalizing the 
liquor traffic, common law prohibition prevailed. I he United 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 335 


States Supreme Court had said in several cases that to keep a 
saloon was not a constitutional or inherent right; it was not a 
natural right to pursue an ordinary calling and was not a privilege 
of a citizen of a state or of the United States. The privilege to 
engage in the liquor business as an inherent or common law right 
of citizenship was denied upon the ground that the liquor business 
was attended with danger to the safety, peace, good order, morals 
and welfare of the community. Judge Artman went on to decide 
that the legislature had no right to legalize the destruction of the 
public health, the public morals and the public safety. The legis- 
lature could not confer legality upon an institution which con- 
travened the fundamental purposes of organized society. 

The Artman decision was never overruled. 

Shortly after that decision Judge Ira Christian in the Circuit 
Court of Hamilton county rendered a decision holding that a 
retail liquor saloon was of itself a public nuisance and that the 
statute authorizing the licensing of the saloon was unconstitu- 
tional. This case, known as the Sopher case, was appealed and 
the decision was overruled in a hasty decision of the state 
Supreme Court. 

These cases as well as a few others had been brought by an 
association of business men led by Prohibitionists with the hope 
of having the license system declared unconstitutional. Strong 
arguments were presented en the unconstitutionality of legalizing 
wrong, but the issue never reached the United States Supreme 
Court. For years Prohibitionists had thought that if the direct 
issue of the right of a state to license the liquor traffic could be 
gotten before the United States Supreme Court and that if the 
effects of the license system should be fully considered by that 
Court, it could not fail to declare against the right of a state to 
license. 

Ix the Artman decision had been appealed to the state Supreme 
Court and reversed it was intended to carry it to the United States 
Supreme Court. But the liquor interests, evidently fearing what 
would happen, did not appeal from Judge Artman’s decision. 

The case involved in Judge Christian’s decision did not con- 
tain any federal issue and could not be carried higher than the 
state courts. 


THE NATIONAL PROHIBITIONIST 


In the latter part of 1907 was started the National Prohtbi- 
tionist, which, under the editorship of William P. F, Ferguson, 


336 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


became the recognized leading national organ of the party for 
several years. It was a consolidation of The Defender, which 
had been published in New York for several years, the Home 
Defender of Chicago, and the subscription list of The New Voice 
which had collapsed following the unfortunate apostasy of Mr. 
Woolley, who had been its editor. 

Two or three years later the liquor interests entered into a 
bold plot to try to silence the National Prolibitionist, which was 
the most militant Prohibition paper of the period. Some out- 
standing pro-liquor men, including the president of the Model 
License League and a powerful Chicago attorney, who was chief 
attorney for the whisky trust, conspired to bring a libel suit 
against Mr. Ferguson. An indictment was prepared in this 
attorney’s office and sent to the office of the District Attorney 
of Cook county, Hlinois, with orders, it was believed, to put it 
through the grand jury. There were a good many queer features 
about the case which indicated the liquor ownership of the whole 
legal machinery of the county in which the second largest city of 
the country is located. However, the Prohibitionists rallied to 
Mr. Ferguson’s help, able counsel was provided and it took the 
jury less than five minutes to arrive at a verdict of “not guilty.” 
The attorney of the whisky trust was the same man who, after 
he died in 1922, was credited in the newspaper obituaries with 
having been very influential at the Republican National Conven- 
tion in 1920 in procuring Mr. Harding’s nomination for the 
Presidency. 


THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF 1908 


The 1908 convention held at Columbus, Ohio, July 15 and 16, 
was in many respects the best national convention in the Party’s 
history. It was a convention of great speeches and numerous 
candidates. Robert H. Patton, of Springfield, Illinois, was Tem- 
porary Chairman, and delivered an address of marvelous power. 
Men who had attended many national and state political conven- 
tions representing all parties declared they had seldom witnessed 
greater and more spontaneous enthusiasm than that evoked by his 
speech. 

Prof. Aaron S. Watkins, who had been nominated for Gov- 
ernor of Ohio, gave the address of welcome which made a fine 
impression. 

William P. F. Ferguson, the editor of the National Prohibi- 
tionist, made an eloquent response. 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 337 


At the night rally, presided over by Joshua Levering, candidate 
for President in 1896, Eugene W. Chafin delivered a stirring 
and masterly address which resulted in winning for him the presi- 
dential nomination. 

Dr, Charles Scanlon, General Secretary of the Permanent 
Committee on Temperance of the Presbyterian Church was made 
Permanent Chairman and also made a speech which compelled 
the delegates to regard him as presidential timber. David B. 
McCalmont was temporary and permanent Secretary, assisted by 
Mrs. Frances E, Beauchamp, Edward W. Clark and Theodore 
Ostlund. Eleven hundred and twenty-six delegates were present. 

The platform was of a different style from that of any that 
had been adopted theretofore. There was a feeling that party 
platforms had become so long that people did not read them. So 
it was decided to adopt a short, terse and concise one which could 
be printed on a postcard and read in a few minutes. Although 
comprising fourteen planks, it contained just 321 words, Dr. 
Samuel Dickie was Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions. 


THE PLATFORM OF 1908 


The Prohibition Party of the United States, assembled in conven- 
tion at Columbus, Ohio, July 15-16, 1908, expressing gratitude to 
Almighty God for the victories of our principles in the past, for en- 
couragement at present, and for confidence in early and triumphant 
success in the future, makes the following declaration of principles, 
and pledges their enactment into law when placed in power: 

1. The submission by Congress to the several States of an amend- 
ment to the Federal Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, sale, 
importation, exportation or transportation of alcoholic liquors for 
beverage purposes. 

2. The immediate prohibition of the liquor traffic for beverage 
purpose in the District of Columbia, in the territories and all places 
over which the national government has jurisdiction; the repeal of 
the internal revenue tax on alcoholic liquors and the prohibition of 
the interstate traffic therein. 

3. The election of United States Senators by direct vote of the 
people. 

4. Equitable, graduated income and inheritance taxes. 

5. The establishment of postal savings banks and the guaranty 
of deposits in banks. 

6. The regulation of all corporations doing an interstate com- 
merce business. 

7. The creation of a permanent tariff commission. 

8. The strict enforcement of law, instead of official tolerance 


338 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


and practical license of the social evil which prevails in many of 
our cities, with its unspeakable traffic in girls. 

9g. Uniform marriage and divorce laws. 

10. An equitable and constitutional employers’ liability act. 

11. Court review of Postoffice Department decisions. 

12. The prohibition of child labor in mines, workshops and fac- 
tories. 

13. Legislation basing suffrage only upon intelligence and ability 
to read and write the English language. 

14. The preservation of the mineral and forest resources of the 
country, and the improvement of the highways and waterways. 

Believing in the righteousness of our cause and the final triumph 
of our principles, and convinced of the unwillingness of the Repub- 
lican and Democratic parties to deal with these issues, we invite 
to full party membership all citizens who are with us agreed. 


Probably no convention had exhibited more enthusiasm from 
start to finish than this one. At the national oratorical contest 
of the Intercollegiate Prohibition Association, held the night 
before the convention opened, the writer while presiding kept 
count and the six contesting orators were applauded exactly one 
hundred times. Four years before at Indianapolis on a similar 
occasion they had been applauded seventy-six times. 

At the period of the balloting for nominations the enthusiasm 
and sustained cheering for favorite candidates far exceeded any- 
thing at any other national political convention that year. It was 
a consecrated enthusiasm due to the conviction of the righteous- 
ness of the cause and the renewed grounds of hope for an early 
victory as the result of the rising tide of prohibition. 

The music was unusually inspiring under the leadership of a 
choir of 150 voices conducted by Charles M. Fillmore, with solos 
by Alvin M. Thatcher, a famous Prohibition bass soloist, and 
with selections by the Puritan Male Quartette of Boston and the 
Marion Quartette of Indiana. 

An interesting description of the convention and characteriza- 
tion of the delegates was given by Walter Wellman, the famous 
Arctic explorer and eminent newspaper correspondent. Writing 
in the Chicago Record Herald, he said: 


WELLMAN’S DESCRIPTION 


Earnestness, conviction to a high ideal of duty, the proselyting, 
reforming, crusading spirit, the spirit that has helped in all ages 
to make the world what it is, through moral force rather than 
through physical conquests, the spirit of the liberators, of the cham- 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 339 


pions of human rights—all these are dominant notes in this con- 
vention. Humble in size and in composition and significance though 
it is, compared to other great political gatherings of the year, yet 
it is impressive in its love for humanity, its singleness of purpose. 

Old-fashioned men and women are these warriors for the water- 
wagon. Unthinking, superficial, ribald persons might sneer at 
them. ... But the fineness of them is in their faces, bespeaking 
intelligence, refinement and work for a cause in which their souls 
are warm. : 

These men and women are typical of that class of society on 
which the nation ever depends in a great crisis, the sort from whom 
all great moral movements spring, the type of people whom one 
instinctively trusts or calls upon for help or brave and persistent 
advocacy of that which they believe is right in spite of all opposi- 
tion. 

Studying parties and political movements simply as an observer, 
independent of all, it seems to me the persistency, the zeal, the 
courage, the dauntlessness of these fighters for principle, and for 
nothing else, entitles them to public recognition as the only purely 
unselfish actors in the national political arena. These people have 
had no fleshpots to beckon them on, no spoils of office to give them 
zeal. Whatever else it may be, this is distinctly and exclusively 
the political party of unselfishness, of working for men and women 
and children, and for nothing else under the sun. And the manner 
of men and women they are you can read in their faces as they take 
their seats in the convention. hall. 

Many convention addresses have I heard this year, many long, 
some studied, a few really eloquent and powerful, but none more 
effective, more to the point, more calculated to give courage to 
friend and anxiety to foe or cause for thought to all who occupy 
middle ground than the keynote speech of Robert Patton of Spring- 
field, Illinois, the temporary presiding officer. 

One cannot help liking these old-fashioned people, these people 
fighting for principle. | 


THE NOMINEES 


There were more candidates for the presidential nomination 
than at any previous convention. Those placed in nomination 
were Fred F. Wheeler, of California, James B. Cranfill, of Texas, 
Dan R. Sheen, of Illinois, W. B. Palmore, of Missouri, Joseph 
P. Tracy, of Michigan, Eugene W. Chafin, of Illinois, Alfred L. 
Manierre, of New York, and in addition to all these Oliver W. 
Stewart received sixty-one votes and the Rev. George R. Stuart 
seven on the first ballot. 


340 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


For President. Eugene W. Chafin was nominated on the 
third ballot. He was more of a “dark horse’ than any other 
candidate ever nominated. While well known and but recently 
nominated for Governor of Illinois, he had not been regarded as 
a presidential candidate until after he had made a masterful 
speech at the convention. After an able nominating speech by 
A. G. Wolfenbarger the sentiment for him increased and he 
easily became the convention’s choice. 

There was no man who was more indoctrinated with the 
philosophy of the Prohibition party than Eugene W. Chafin. He 
had practically given his life to the cause. 

Born in Wisconsin, in 1852, he was graduated from the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin and engaged in the practice of law. He 
acquired a large practice and appeared fifty times before the 
Supreme Court of Wisconsin. He was a thorough student of 
American history and had made a special study of the lives of 
Washington and Lincoln. He was the author of Lives of the 
Presidents, 1896, and Lincoln; the Man of Sorrow, 1908. 

He had been one of a small group of leaders who had issued 
the call for the organization of the Prohibition party in Wis- 
consin in 1881, and from that time on had been active in behalf 
of the Party. In 1884 he had served as Sergeant-at-Arms of 
the National Convention and in 1900 was Chairman of the 
Committee on Resolutions. 

He had been nominated repeatedly for public office both in 
Wisconsin and Illinois, having been a candidate for Governor 
in Wisconsin and had just been nominated for a like office in 
Illinois. 

He had been identified with all kinds of temperance work and 
had held high positions in the Good Templar order. For two 
years he had served as Superintendent of the Washingtonian 
Home, an institution in Chicago for the care of inebriates. 

He was a Methodist and had served two terms as president 
of the Epworth League of Wisconsin. 

For Vice-President. Aaron S. Watkins, of Ohio, was nomi- 
nated. He was born in Ohio in 1863 and was educated at Ohio 
Northern University and at Taylor University. 

He studied law and was admitted to the bar, but later entered 
the ministry in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He also served 
as a college professor and was vice-president of Ohio Northern 
University. 

He first came to wide attention among the Prohibitionists of 
the country by his remarkable campaign for Governor of Ohio 


EE ————— — = 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 541 


in 1905. Two days before his nomination for Vice-President he 
had been again nominated for Governor of Ohio. In 1912 he 
was a second time nominated for Vice-President with Chafin 
and in 1920 he was the Prohibition candidate for President, the 
only man thrice honored by the Prohibition party with a national 
nomination. 

Both candidates entered aggressively into the campaign. Each 
spoke in twenty-eight states. The party never had two abler 
campaigners as candidates. 

Yet there was a net loss of nearly 5,000 votes. An analysis of 
the election returns shows that the chief losses were in five states 
where county option or local option laws had been passed. 
There was a loss of over 20,000 votes in the five states of Ohio, 
Indiana, Ilinois, Kentucky, and Oregon, which overcame gains 
in other states. 

In the concerted effort to vote out saloons, in which the Pro- 
hibitionists always took a very active part, there had been a sub- 
merging of emphasis upon the need of a party even by some of 
the party workers. This tended to obscure the larger purpose 
of the party which was far more than the voting out of local 
saloons. Many people did not perceive the difference between 
the program of the Prohibitionists and the local optionists or 
omni-partisans. 

Then, this was the period when widespread, apparent victories 
were being won through local option and omni-partisan methods. 
The victories were pointed to as evidence of the sufficiency, if 
not the superiority, of those methods. They were cited as evi- 
dence that a special party was not needed. What, it was asked, 
was the use of throwing away one’s vote on a small party when 
wonderful victories could be won without it? All of these 
factors tended to keep down the vote. 

Following the election of 1908 there was a renewed analysis 
of the party argument. In the next few years there was prob- 
ably more clear thinking by the Prohibition party leaders upon 
the subject of prohibition and party government than there had 
been for nearly a score of years. 

Chafin, Watkins, William P. F. Ferguson, Robert H. Patton, 
A. A. Hopkins, J. Burritt Smith and others expounded the party 
philosophy with great ability. The subjects which constituted the 
chief centers of controversy in that period, local option and omni- 
partisanism, will be discussed in succeeding chapters. 

In September, 1900, a celebration of the fortieth anniversary 
of the founding of the party was held in Chicago. 


342 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


A message on the “Genesis of the Prohibition Party” was 
received from John Russell, the Father of the Party, which was 
written on his eighty-seventh birthday. Among other things he 
said: 

Like other sacred principles of social and political philosophy, in 
both church and state, Prohibition must remain comparatively 
powerless until suitable conditions are supplied to render it ef- 
fective. It has long seemed to me axiomatic that government by 
the people involves the agency of political parties. Abraham Lin- 
coln never spoke more wisely than when he said, “A free people, 
in times of peace and quiet, when pressed by no common danger, 
naturally divide into parties.’ 


Able addresses were made, some of which were extensively 
circulated. 

Said William P. F. Ferguson in an address, “Farwell Hall 
Forty Years After’: 

It seems to me that history will record of the men of Farwell Hall 
and of the work they did, first and chiefest, that they were right. 
Test by whatever test you will, or may, the founding of the Pro- 
hibition party, it was a work in accord with the very highest prin- 
ciples of political science. Not only is the prohibition policy right 
and wise, but the Prohibition party is as clearly a necessity to the 
establishment of that principle and the carrying out of that policy, 
as rational method is essential to the accomplishment of any con- 
structive task. 


One feature of the National Committee’s educational cam- 
paign in 1909 was a series of great debates. At a national 
convention of the Model License League, Mayor Rose, of Mil- 
waukee, delivered a widely advertised attack upon the Prohibi- 
tion party and the prohibition movement, in the course of which 
he flung down a challenge to debate with any officially accredited 
champion of our cause. 

Former Chairman Samuel Dickie was chosen as the Prohibition 
representative and three debates were arranged. Two were held, 
one in Milwaukee and one in Chicago, but so thoroughly was the 
wet champion worsted that he backed out of the third debate. 
Dr. Dickie delivered sledge-hammer blows. Wide publicity was 
given and the debates were published in book form. Several 
other debates were held with different opponents, among the 
Prohibition debaters being, Dan R. Sheen, Aaron S. Watkins, 
Felix T. McWhirter, William P. F. Ferguson and Dr. E. L, 
Eaton. 

During the period of the administration of Chairman Jones 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 343 


the National Committee maintained a press bureau known as the 
Associated Prohibition Press, which sent out to the metropolitan 
daily, religious and prohibition papers of the country, a con- 
stant succession of special articles and news bulletins describing 
the latest current developments in the prohibition movement. 

No small part of the increasing interest of the newspapers and 
magazines in the subject was due to the quality of the matter 
which was furnished. 

The publicity work was in charge of Fred D. L. Squires, who, 
from the time of his undergraduate days at the University of 
Chicago in 1900, when he conducted a college department of the 
New Voice, was one of the leaders in prohibition journalism 
for over a dozen years. For a part of the time he was as- 
sisted by E. Deets Pickett, later prominent in the work of the 
Methodist Episcopal Board of Temperance, Prohibition and 
Public Morals. 

In 1911 the National Committee began the publication of the. 
American Advance, a high grade weekly organ. But there was 
some objection to the National Committee publishing a paper, so 
in I913 it was discontinued as a Committee-owned organ, al- 
though a group of Prohibitionists continued it for a year or two 
longer. 

Through many years the National Committee promoted the 
production of effective literature and was the headquarters for the 
best book, pamphlet and leaflet literature to be had. 

The year 1909 marks the beginning of organized international 
effort on the part of Prohibitionists looking toward world pro- 
hibition. 

That year about thirty American Prohibitionists attended a 
conference in London of ten times that number from every sec- 
tion of the world at which was organized the International Pro- 
hibition Confederation, the name of which was changed a few 
years later to the World Prohibition Federation. 

In the succeeding years it collected information regarding the 
progress of the prohibition movement in the various countries 
and distributed literature throughout the world so that the leaders 
of the different nations might gain a better understanding of the 
principles and practical operation of prohibition. Following the 
ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 there were 
several American Prohibitionists who visited other countries 
under its auspices, including Charles Scanlon, E. L. G. Hohenthal, 
Virgil G. Hinshaw, Eugene W. Chafin, W. G. Calderwood and 
D. Leigh Colvin. 


344 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The officers, the first two of whom have served since 1909, 
are: Guy Hayler, of London, Honorary President; Mr. Edward 
Page Gaston, formerly of Chicago and later of London, Hon- 
orary Secretary; and Dr. Charles Scanlon, of Pittsburgh, Hon- 
orary Treasurer. Through the years it has had an eminent group 
of vice-presidents representing all of the leading countries of the 
world. 

Mr. Hayler for a number of years has edited with great ability 
a quarterly journal, the International Record packed with cur- 
rent information regarding the progress of the movement 
throughout the world. 

An organization auxiliary to the party which was quite active 
in this period was the Woman’s Prohibition Club of America. It 
started as a national organization at the national convention at 
Indianapolis in 1904, the organization having been perfected 
in 1905. Its object was to induce men and women to vote the 
Prohibition ticket. It did not attempt widespread local organi- 
zation inasmuch as the W. C. T. U. was occupying that field very 
largely, but in various ways it performed valuable service for 
the Party. 


THE GENERAL PROHIBITION MOVEMENT 


Between July, 1907, and January, 1900, six southern states 
adopted prohibitory laws, four by legislative action and two by 
popular vote. The movement against the local saloon in many 
other states made great strides. A large number of counties 
and municipalities voted out the saloon. 

So decided was the sentiment against saloons becoming that 
although the major parties usually remained silent, in some states 
certain public men in those parties were beginning to take a 
stand more or less positively against the saloons. 

But in the election of 1908 and succeeding elections the liquor 
interests, expert in the manipulation of politics, slaughtered politi- 
cally nearly every public man who took even a moderate position 
against the liquor traffic. 

Notwithstanding the tremendous sentiment against the saloons 
as expressed through the referendum votes, the liquor power, like 
a wounded wild beast of the jungle, became infuriated and fought 
back with redoubled ferocity. It spared no effort or expense to 
defeat practically every public man who was even inclined to be 
dry. 


————— 





THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 345 


In many cases they used their familiar balance of power plan. 
One illustration was in Indiana. There, in 1908, under the splen- 
did leadership of Governor J. Frank Hanly, who had called a 
special session for that purpose, the Legislature enacted a strong 
county option law. As a result seventy out of the ninety-two 
counties of Indiana voted out the saloons. The total dry majority 
in all the seventy-four counties which held elections was 65,605. 

At the following election Governor Hanly could not himself be 
a candidate for reelection, as the constitution of Indiana limits a 
Governor to one term. But under Governor Hanly’s leadership 
the Republican party adopted a county option plank and it was 
committed to the law. 

The liquor interests threw their balance of power to the op- 
posite party, caused the defeat of Governor Hanly’s party, and 
as soon as a later election, 1910, enabled them to obtain control 
of the state Senate, as well as the lower House, they repealed the 
county option law, and in 1911 the saloons returned to all but 
twenty-four counties of the state. 

To add grossest insult and humiliation to Governor Hanly, 
in 1910, when the former Governor sought to be a delegate to his 
party’s state convention which he had so ably led two years bhe- 
fore, he was defeated by a negro ward heeler who was chosen 
through the backing of the Republican organization of his 
district. 

Not only in Indiana, but in Ohio, Maine and Idaho, dry Gov- 
ernors were defeated. Even William Jennings Bryan, three times 
Democratic candidate for President, was made to suffer party 
ostracism in his state because of his championship of county 
option in IQIO. 

Even in the South such advocates of prohibition as Governor 
Glenn of North Carolina, Governor Comer of Alabama and Gov- 
ernor Campbell of Texas were driven from public office. 

In Alabama the prohibitory law had passed the Senate in 1907 
by a vote of 32 to 2. The liquor interests boasted that at the suc- 
ceeding election in I910 thirty-one of the thirty-two members 
of the state Senate who had voted for prohibition were left at 
home and the new Legislature violently repealed the law in 1911. 
It was reinstated again in 1915 by the following Legislature, 
Alabama electing its Legislature only once in four years. 

In Georgia the law was made of little effect as the result of a 
hostile court decision. The term “intoxicating liquors” was con- 
strued to mean only those liquors which contained four per cent 
or more of alcohol. Those liquors containing less than four per 


346 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


cent might be intoxicating but would have to be proven so in 
each particular case. This decision, given in 1908 after the law 
had been in operation only a few months, opened the way to the 
establishment of near-beer saloons which were supposed to sell 
only beer containing less than four per cent of alcohol but which 
actually also sold large quantities of stronger liquors. 

After that decision the Legislature, taking cognizance of the 
opening of near-beer places, instead of prohibiting them, made 
the colossal blunder of trying to regulate them and passed a law 
taxing places selling so-called imitation liquor, and also passed 
a law authorizing councils of municipalities of over 2,500 people 
to license them. Thus the original prohibitory law of 1907 was 
made practically a dead letter. 

The judge who wrote the decision became, in IQII, a candidate 
for Governor on a local option, anti-prohibition platform and it 
was estimated that $750,000 was spent in his unsuccessful cam- 
paign. Much of the money was used to pay up back taxes, which 
were required to be paid before a citizen could vote. Much of 
his campaign literature bore the imprint of Louisville, Kentucky, 
the distillery center. 

It was not until 1915 that a satisfactory law was secured. 

Georgia had an excellent opportunity to compare the relative 
effects of license, prohibition and the near-beer régime. The 
arrests for intoxication in Atlanta for the first three months 
in 1907, under license, were 1,293; for the first three months of 
1908, under prohibition, they fell to only 328; for the first three 
months of 1909, with near-beer saloons, they rose again to 947. 

Even in the old, original prohibition state of Maine the liquor 
elements of both parties, aided and abetted by certain Republi- 
can politicians who wanted to be rid of prohibition, threw their 
balance of power to the Democrats, elected a Democratic adminis- 
tration in 1910, secured resubmission and came within 758 votes 
of repealing the state constitutional amendment. 

As a consequence of (a) liquor’s power in politics, (b) the 
fact that the enforcement of the law was so often in the hands of 
its enemies, (c) the wrong methods employed, including an at- 
tempted local solution of a national problem and the seeking to 
work through officers elected by political parties containing con- 
flicting interests—as a result of these and other factors the 
advance of the anti-saloon movement was brought almost to a 
standstill. 

From the time when Tennessee passed her first Prohibition 
law in January, 1909, until Virginia voted for her law in Sep- 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 347 


tember, 1914, after the beginning of the World War, there was a 
period of over five and one-half years when only one state was 
added to the prohibition column, West Virginia, and in the same 
period one was subtracted, Alabama, leaving the number ot 
prohibition states the same, nine. 

West Virginia. West Virginia was the brightest spot in the 
general prohibition movement in this period, 1909-1914. There 
a prohibitory law was adopted, as the result of a submission to 
the people in 1912, by a majority of 92,342, a vote of more than 
two and a quarter to one. 

If there had been a vote covering the whole country, and if 
the voters had voted for prohibition in the same proportion as 
they did in West Virginia, the total prohibition majority out of 
the 15,036,542 votes cast for President in 1912, would have 
amounted to 2,921,600. 

That such a handsome majority was obtained was because the 
people had an opportunity to express their views upon the ques- 
tion on its merits, without being subject to liquor’s corruption 
and mendacious propaganda. 

The liquor interests did not take a very active part in that 
campaign. They had intended to, and the national liquor interests 
had $800,000 available which they expected to spend. But they 
were foiled and blocked in their plans by the death of one of their 
key political manipulators and by other obstacles. So, anticipat- 
ing defeat, they did not spend their big corruption fund, with the 
result that the people of West Virginia had an opportunity to give 
an honest expression of their real sentiment on the question. 

There also the campaign on the prohibition side was ably 
managed, There was splendid cooperation of all the moral forces 
who worked together in a Ratification Federation, This included 
representatives of all the churches and the temperance and pro- 
hibition organizations. 

In that state the Prohibition party wielded a large influence in 
building up the prohibition sentiment which resulted in such a 
splendid victory. For several years the State Committee had 
been conducting an extensive speaking campaign in behalf of 
prohibition. 

During the state chairmanship of E. W. Mills, covering a 
period of two or three years prior to submission, some two thou- 
sand meetings had been held over the state, many of which were 
addressed by some of the most able national speakers of the Party 
and others by capable state workers. Oliver W. Stewart had 
spoken at a series of more than two hundred and fifty meetings, 


348 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


as a result of which town after town voted out saloons. Chafin, 
Watkins, Howard, Scanlon, Fanning, Vibbert, and the Patton- 
Mezick Trio had held many meetings and others came into the 
state for occasional meetings. H. D. Patton and the Mezicks 
held meetings in Moundsville for nineteen nights resulting in 
driving every saloon from the city. 

A Prohibition party mayor had been elected in Fairmount, at 
least one member of the Legislature had been elected, and the 
Party had grown rapidly. 

While the intention was to build up the Prohibition party, the 
outcome was that the larger parties were forced to submit an 
amendment. 

Considering that West Virginia had a considerable foreign 
element and also a good-sized negro vote, the result of the ex- 
pression of the popular will in that state was the outstanding vic- 
tory in a five-year period. 

In 1910 the Prohibition party nominated exceptionally able 
candidates for Governor in the various states. In New York the 
candidate was Dr. T. Alexander MacNicholl, of New York City. 
-He was a prominent physician who had specialized on the alcohol 
problem particularly with respect to its hereditary effects. Be- 
ginning early in his practice he had made a study of the effects 
of alcohol upon school-children, The result of his investigations, 
covering more than 200,000 children, revealed appalling facts 
regarding the relation of alcohol to mental deficiency and physical 
defects. Comparing selected comparable groups of families of 
drinkers with those of abstainers his investigations revealed 
that 97 per cent of the children of abstainers were proficient 
in study as against 32 per cent of those having drinking parents. 
Ninety per cent of the children of abstaining parents were normal 
in body as against 7 per cent of those having drinking parents. 

Another fact discovered was that for every child of total ab- 
stainers that dies under two years of age, five children of drinkers 
die. 

_ Dr. MacNicholl spoke with tremendous conviction and great 
power, declaring that a wave of alcoholic degeneracy was sweep- 
ing the land and the only effective agency for the destruction of 
the liquor traffic was a party thoroughly committed to that object. 

Other candidates for Governor that year included John A. 
Nicholls in Massachusetts, E, L. G. Hohenthal in Connecticut, 
Madison F, Larkin in Pennsylvania, Dr. H. A. Thompson in 
Ohio, Fred W. Corbett in Michigan, B. E. Van Keuren in Wis- 
consin, 5. P. Meads in California, and Andrew Jackson Houston 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 349 


in Texas. The latter was the son of the heroic Sam Houston, 
famous in the early history of Texas. 

At the election five Prohibition members were elected to the 
Minnesota Legislature and one to the Ilinois Legislature. Lynn 
R. Lewis was elected Mayor of Cortland, New York, and a num- 
ber of other local officers were elected. 

In this period especially mention should be made of the faith- 
ful, loyal, hardworking state chairmen. They were working 
against great obstacles, as omni-partisanism, with its easier way, 
was holding the center of the stage. The chairmen had to super- 
vise an immense amount of detail merely to nominate candidates 
for all of the offices on the ticket. For example, in New York 
there were over five hundred and fifty judicial, congressional, 
senatorial, assembly, county and school commissioner districts of 
the state where candidates were voted for every two years. Full 
tickets were nominated in nearly all of the districts. The nomi- 
nation of tickets was merely preliminary to the holding of meet- 
ings, circulation of literature, the perfecting of the local organi- 
zations, the house to house canvassing of votes and all the other 
work that needed to be done to carry on an effective campaign. 
Unfortunately only a small fraction of the election districts were 
ever adequately organized. 

Throughout this period the Party maintained in the field a num- 
ber of able speakers who were carrying on an invaluable educa- 
tion. 


THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF IQI2 


Delegates from forty-two states assembled for the eleventh na- 
tional convention, which was held on the Steel Pier projecting 
out over the Atlantic Ocean, at Atlantic City, New Jersey. 

Clinton N. Howard, of New York, was Temporary Chair- 
man. In a keynote speech entitled “The Handwriting on the 
Wall” he not only added to his reputation as one of the ablest 
speakers on the American platform but demonstrated his mastery 
of the current political situation. 

C. O. Fenton, editor of the Logansport, Indiana, Times, and. 
Mrs. Frances E, Beauchamp, of Kentucky, State President of the 
W. C. T. U., were the Secretaries. Dr. Charles H. Mead, of 
New Jersey, was Permanent Chairman. 

For a second time a short, concise platform, known as a post- 
card platform, was adopted. It contained sixteen planks and 
four hundred and twenty-five words. Frank J. Sibley was 
Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions. 


350 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


THE PLATFORM OF IQI2 


The Prohibition Party in National Convention assembled at 
Atlantic City, New Jersey, July 10, 1912, recognizing God as the 
source of all governmental authority, makes the following declara- 
tion of principles and policies. 

1. The alcoholic drink traffic is wrong; is the most serious drain 
on the wealth and resources of the nation; is detrimental to the 
general welfare and destructive of the ‘inalienable rights of life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All laws taxing or licensing 
a traffic which produces crime, poverty and political corruption, and 
spreads disease and death, should be repealed. To destroy such a 
traffic there must be elected to power a political party which will 
administer the government from the standpoint that the alcoholic 
drink traffic is a crime and not a business, and we pledge that the 
manufacture, importation, exportation, transportation and sale of 
alcoholic beverages shall be prohibited. 

We favor: 

2. Suffrage for women on the same terms as for men. 

3. A uniform marriage and divorce law. The extermination of 
polygamy. And the complete suppression of the traffic in girls. 

4. Absolute protection of the rights of labor, without impair- 
ment of the rights of capital. 

5. The settlement of all international disputes by arbitration. 

6. The abolition of child labor in mines, workshops and fac- 
tories, with the rigid enforcement of the laws now flagrantly vio- 
lated. 

7. The election of United States Senators by direct vote of the 
people. 

8. A Presidential term of six years, and one term only. 

9. Court review of Post Office and other departmental decisions 
and orders; the extension of the Postal Savings Bank system, and 
of Rural Delivery, and the establishment of an efficient parcels post. 

10. The initiative, referendum and recall. 

11. As the tariff is a commercial question it should be fixed on 
the scientific basis of accurate knowledge, secured by means of a 
permanent, omni-partisan tariff commission, with ample powers. 

12, Equitable graduated income and inheritance taxes. 

13. Conservation of our forest and mineral reserves, and the 
reclamation of waste lands. All mineral and timber lands, and 
water powers, now owned by the government, should be held per- 
petually, and leased for revenue purposes. 

14. Clearly defined laws for the regulation and control of cor- 
porations transacting an interstate business. 

15. Efficiency and economy in governmental administration. 

16, The protection of one day in seven as a day of rest. 

To these fundamental principles the National Prohibition Party 


THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 351 


renews its long allegiance and on these issues invites the coopera- 
tion of all good citizens, to the end that the true object of gov- 
ernment may be attained, namely, equal and exact justice for all. 


CHAFIN AND WATKINS RENOMINATED 


For the first time in its history the Prohibition party re- 
nominated its candidates of the preceding campaign, Eugene W. 
Chafin for President and Aaron S. Watkins for Vice-President. 

Since their previous nomination both had campaigned over 
almost the entire nation. Not only had they spoken during the 
campaign of 1908 but throughout the four years they had spent 
much of the time upen the platform. They were consequently 
the best known Prohibitionists who could have been chosen. 

Furthermore, they were men of large caliber, they were mas- 
ters of the party philosophy, in brief, they were men the Party 
felt proud to honor. So, although others were placed in nomina- 
tion for each position, the sentiment of the convention was over- 
whelmingly for Chafin and Watkins. 

Chief interest at the convention centered in the selection of a 
national chairman. There had been two groups, one of which 
favored the existing chairman, and another which opposed. 
Both sides agreed that the convention itself should elect the chair- 
man rather than the National Committee. 

The convention evidenced its desire to select a chairman who 
was not identified with either side and selected a man who at the 
time was three thousand miles away at his law office in Port- 
land, Oregon, but one who was well known to a large proportion 
of the delegates. It elected Virgil G. Hinshaw, who ever since 
his graduation from Penn College, Iowa, twelve years before, 
had been an officer of the Intercollegiate Prohibition Association. 
He had been vice-president of that organization two years, 
treasurer six years and had just completed four years as presi- 
dent. Much of that period he had spent traveling among the 
colleges of the country enlisting the students for service and lead- 
ership in behalf of prohibition. He had participated in several 
legislative campaigns and had been especially interested in en- 
listing students for work in those campaigns. He had also made 
an unusually good record in raising funds. He had taken a law 
course at the University of Minnesota and was practicing at 
Portland, Oregon. 

A new executive committee was chosen composed, in addi- 
tion to the chairman, of John B. Lewis, Vice-Chairman; Mrs. 


852 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Frances E. Beauchamp, Secretary; H. P. Faris, Treasurer, to- 
gether with Finley C. Hendrickson, W. G. Calderwood, Robert 
H. Patton, F. W. Emerson and Frank J. Sibley. 

In the campaign Chafin made five hundred and thirty-eight 
speeches in fourteen weeks, an average of nearly five and one- 
half for every day. - 

Among the able candidates for Governor who made note- 
worthy campaigns were Dr. T. Alexander MacNicholl, of New 
York, nominated for the second time; Daniel A. Poling, of Ohio, 
who made an aggressive automobile campaign, speaking 330 
times; W. H. Hickman, of Indiana; E. E. Lobeck, of Minne- 
sota, and Charles E. Stokes, of Missouri. 


THE LITERATURE OF THE DECADE, TQ00-1909 


Leading Prohibition Books 

FeHLanpr, A. F.—A Century of Drink Reform, 1904, 405 pp. 

WooLtey, JoHN G., and Jounson, Witt1am E.—Temperance 
Progress in the Nineteenth Century, 1903, 503 pp. 

Warner, Harry S.—Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem, 
1908, rev. ed. 1913, 298 pp. (Used as a text-book in 
many colleges. ) 

MutviniLtL, W. Franx—Prohibition Text Book for the Cam- 
paign of 1900, 126 pp. 

Mutviuitt, W. F.—The Official Campaign Text Book of the 
Prohibition Party, 1904, 120 pp. 

Witson, ALtonzo E.—American Prohibition Year Book, pub- 
lished annually 1900-1909 and later. 

Hopxins, A. A.—Profit and Loss in Man, 1908, 367 pp. 

FErGcuson, Witi1am P. F.—The Canteen in the United States 
Army, 1900, 212 pp. 

JEFFORDS, SyDNEY G.—A Series of Notable Debates—Dry- 
Wet; Dickie-Rose, Sheen-Rose, McWhirter-Proctor, 
1909. 

DicktE-Rose Degates. Prohibition, Is It Right? Yes!—No! 
Two booklets No. 1 and No. 2, 1909. 

Bene, Jil, CATON, LJ), STEWART, OLIVER Woe A Triangular 
Debate, 1902, 96 pp. 

SWALLow, S. C.—III Score and X: An Autobiography, 19009, 
432 pp. 

Pamphlets 

WooLLey, Joun G.—A Lion Hunter. An Address, delivered 
in the campaign of 1900, 30 pp. 








THE CHAFIN AND WATKINS CAMPAIGNS 3538 


Crane, CHarLes A.—Ethics of the Ballot-Box, 1900, 8 pp., also, 
Why I Support Mr. Woolley, 1900, If pp. 

STEWART, OLIVER W.—Party Fidelity, nominating speech in 
Illinois Legislature, 1903. 

The New Voice Leaflets, 40 leaflets covering current phases of 
the question, 1900. 

Woottey, JoHN G.—The Prohibition Party. 

Jounson, WiLtiAM E.—The Prohibition Party. 

Parton, Ropert H—The Liquor Trafic and Inalienable 
Rights, 1904, 16 pp. 

CaLpERWwoop, W. G.—Prohibition as a Present Political Plat- 
form, reprinted from Annals of the American Academy, 
Neaies2, No.2; (pal07. : 

HENDRICKSON, FINLEY C.—A Square Deal for Prohibition, 

1906, booklet, 14 pp. 

The Prohibition Party’s Attitude Toward Other Great Re- 

forms, 1909, 8 pp. 

The leading national Prohibition party newspapers were: 

The New Voice, 1900-1906. 
The National Prohibitionist, 1907-1911. 
Clean Politics, 1909-1914. 





Physiological and Psychological 

Horsey, Sir Vicror, and Sturce, Mary G.—Alcohol and the 
Human Body, 1907. 5th ed., enlarged, London, 1915, 
337 PP: 

Scientific Conclusions Concerning the Alcohol Problem and Its 
Practical Relations to Life. U. S. Senate Document 48, 
1g09, 179 Pp. 

Auien, Mrs. Martua M.—Alcohol, a Useless and Unnecessary 
Medicine, 1900, rev. ed. 1910, 435 pp. 

Mason, Dr. L. D.—Moderate Drinking, Its Dangers and Pos- 
sibilities, 1908, II pp. 

MacNicuotz, Dr. T. A—Alcohol and the Disabilities of School 
Children. Address at the 57th Annual Session of the 
American Medical Association, 1908. 

Wiiutams, Henry SmitrH—Alcohol; How it Affects the In- 
dividual, the Community and the Race, 1909, I51 pp. 

Britiincs, Joun S.—Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Prob- 
lem, 1903, 2 vols. These were two of the Committee of 
Fifty books. That committee was regarded as having an 
anti-prohibition bias. See Gorpon, ErNnest—Two Foot- 


354 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


notes to the History of the Anti-Alcoholic movement, 


1916, 64 pp. 
Cutten, Georce B.—The Psychology of Alcoholism, 1907, 


357 PP- 
VAN cud Jorn G.—Effect of Total Abstinence on the Death 
Rate, 1904, 12 pp. 
No attempt is made in this book to cover the physiologi- 
cal aspects, consequently the bibliography in this field 
covers only the leading and better known books, 


Miscellaneous 

ARTMAN, SAMUEL R.—The Legalized Outlaw, 1908, 295 pp. 

CHAPMAN, Erwin S.—A Stainless Flag, 1906, 32 pp. 

Trickett, C. W.—The Cleansing of a Large City, 1907. (Ex- 
perience in law enforcement in Kansas City, Kansas.) 
Pamphlet. 

STEPHENS, I. E.—Prohibition in Kansas, 1902, 143 pp. 

HAMMELL, GEorGE M.—tThe Passing of the Saloon, 1908, 436 


Pp- 

Regulation of the Liquor Traffic. American Academy of Politi- — 
cal and Social Science, papers, 1908, 150 pp. 

CALKINS, RayMonp C.—Substitutes for the Saloon, 1901, 397 


pp. 
Crarts, Dr. anp Mrs. WILBur F.—Intoxicants and Opium in 
all Lands and Times, 1900, rev. ed., 1909, 287 pp. 


Chapter XX 
LOCAL OPTION 


It has been said that there is a peculiar characteristic in the 
nature of man which causes him to try every conceivable wrong 
method to solve a problem before he chooses the right method. 
This process seems to have been followed in the United States 
with reference to the liquor problem. 

Chapters have been devoted to high license and the dispensary 
system. Another wrong method which the Prohibitionists had 
to surmount was local option. Of all the methods short of state 
prohibition it was the most strongly advocated by the opponents 
of the saloon. 

Local option was the method whereby minor political divisions 
were empowered to decide whether license to sell liquor should 
be granted within their territory. 

The laws in the different states varied a great deal as to the 
scope of territory involved, as to the period of time through 
which a policy adopted should apply and as to the means by which 
the policy could be reversed. 

With respect to the territory covered, the unit in some cases 
was the town or city; in some cases the township; in some cases 
a ward, precinct or residence district of a city; in some cases a 
county exclusive of a municipality of a certain population and, 
in its most favored form, the territory included the whole county. 
This was called county option. 

With respect to the period, in Massachusetts, from 1881 on, 
every city and town voted on the question of license or no-license 
every year. In the majority of local option states, after the 
policy was voted, another election could not be held for two 
years. Ina few states the policy was to continue for three or 
four years and in a few, only one. 

Regarding the method of reversing the policy or bringing on 
another election, in a few states the elections were to be held at 
regular intervals every year, every two years or every four 
years. But under many of the laws a subsequent election could 
be brought by either side presenting a petition requesting an 
election signed by a certain percentage of the voters. 


356 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Local option ordinarily applied merely to the local sale and not 
to the manutacture, importation, transportation or possession of 
liquor. 

Local option should be distinguished from local no-license or 
local prohibition. It was one method of adopting local no- 
license providing the voters in the particular, prescribed territory 
in which the election was held gave a majority for that policy. 
On the other hand, it provided for license if the majority in the 
particular area voted for that. It contemplated license just as 
much as no-license, depending upon which received a majority 
in the specified local area. 


EARLY) ELISTORY OF LOCAL -OPTION 


Local option waves swept over the country, or sections of it, at 
intervals from 1833 on. 

Some of the temperance histories state that the first provision 
for local option was in Georgia in 1833 when the Legislature 
extended to the inferior courts of two counties, Liberty and 
Camden, the right to grant or withhold retail licenses, "These 
courts were elected by the people and the option was therefore 
exercised through elected, representative officials, 

In the later thirties, which was the period of widely organized 
temperance societies, these organizations, seeking to remove the 
immediate temptations, attempted to close the ubiquitous licensed 
saloons. In Massachusetts six counties elected county commis- 
sioners who refused to issue license. In Illinois in 1839 a law was 
passed providing that, if a majority of the voters in any county, 
justice district, incorporated town or ward in a city should 
petition against license therein, none should be granted until a 
like petition in favor of license should be filed. 

Khode Island in 1837 passed a law that towns and wards 
might by vote instruct their officers that no license be granted 
therein. New Hampshire in 1838 and Connecticut in 1839 also 
provided for a form of local option. 

Most of the legal provisions of this period were swept away 
by the influence of the Washingtonian Movement of 1840-1843 
which overemphasized moral suasion to the almost entire ex- 
clusion of legal suasion. 

Between 1844 and 1850 the local no-license movement made 
considerable headway. In Ohio, in 1844, thirteen counties were 
under local no-license, including the counties in which such 
leading cities as Cleveland, Columbus and Springfield are lo- 


LOCAL OPTION 357 


cated. In New York, in 1846, under a local option law enacted 
in 1845, out of eight hundred and fifty-six cities and towns in 
the state outside of New York City, seven hundred and twenty- 
eight voted no-license, but in 1847 the law was repealed. 

Even in this early period, however, there is little evidence to 
indicate that the liquor question was looked upon as merely local. 
The local no-license efforts were merely incidental to the growing 
movement against the sale of liquor and the increasing con- 
viction that to license the liquor trafhec was wrong under any 
circumstances. 

This attitude toward the whole license system was shown by the 
placing of anti-license provisions in the state constitutions of 
Michigan and Ohio in 1850 and 1851. 

Furthermore, the insufficiency of local no-license was being 
recognized even at that time and, from the passage of the Maine 
Law in 1851 on, all the aggressive anti-liquor sentiment was en- 
grossed in the securing of statewide prohibition. In the period 
1851 to 1855 thirteen states adopted state prohibition. With the 
single exception of New Jersey every state in the North passed 
either prohibition laws or laws at least as strong as prohibiting 
the retail sale of liquors for consumption on the premises. And 
New Jersey in two successive Legislatures came within one vote 
of enacting a prohibition law. 

From 1856 to 1872 there was little growth in legislation of any 
kind. In 1872 and 1873 Pennsylvania passed laws for the sub- 
mission of the license question every year in every city and county. 
Forty-one of the sixty-seven counties of Pennsylvania voted no- 
license but in 1875 the law was repealed. 

In 1874 California enacted city and township local option 
laws. Out of seventy-nine towns and cities voting, fifty-nine, 
including the city of Oakland, voted against license. The law 
was soon declared unconstitutional. 

In 1874 three hundred towns of Illinois voted against 
license. 

The same year Kentucky enacted a general local option law, 
one of the first of that type passed. At the first election, out of 
two hundred and thirty-nine towns voting all but thirty-two 
voted against license. 

This law was said to have been drafted on a Sunday evening 
in a wholesale liquor house in Louisville for the purpose of 
defeating statutory state prohibition. A state prohibitory law 
had passed the House and there was a majority pledged to it 
in the Senate. The liquor men, thoroughly frightened, pro- 


358 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


posed a compromise on local option. The temperance side 
weakly accepted, succumbing to the fallacious argument that pro- 
hibition could not be enforced, and that local option, by creating 
public sentiment, would lead up to prohibition. It was forty-five 
years before state prohibition was obtained. 

In the southern states in the seventies and eighties, and even 
earlier, there were a number of special local prohibition laws 
passed, in some cases covering certain counties, in other cases 
the prohibition applied to certain districts, frequently within a 
certain distance of an educational institution. 

General local option laws were enacted in Georgia in 188 5, and 
in Mississippi in 1886. Missouri, in 1887, enacted a county op- 
tion law, excluding from the county unit places having a popula- 
tion of 2,500 or more. Of the eighty-three counties holding 
elections in the first nineteen months, sixty-one voted no-license. 
By 1904 there were just six no-license counties left. In Illinois 
in 1881, out of eight hundred and thirty-two towns voting, six 
hundred and forty-five voted no-license. In 1883 in West Vir- 
ginia, forty-one out of fifty-four counties were under no-license. 
{n 1884 in Maryland, thirteen of the twenty-three counties were 
dry. In Michigan, under a law passed in 1877 thirty-six counties 
voted out the saloon within a few months and in 1888, out of 
thirty-six counties voting, thirty-four voted against the saloon 
by a vote of 83,000 to 40,000. Subsequently there was only one 
no-license county left in the state, the law having been declared 
unconstitutional. As late as 1908 there was only one dry county. 

Similarly, in nearly all of the local option states there was an 
early and decided recession. Outside of some of the southern 
states, where the local no-license policy became somewhat more 
permanent, there was hardly a state where a local no-license policy 
could be maintained, outside of some rural communities or sec- 
tions composed of a selected type of population. 

Even in Georgia, except in those counties where local prohibi- 
tion had been established by legislation which provided for no re- 
submission, there were few counties which were able to maintain 
a continuous dry policy. Most of the counties which went dry 
under the general local option law went wet again. The two 
original no-license counties which had outlawed the saloon in 
1833 had backslid long before the Civil War. 

The limitations of local option were almost universally recog- 
nized by the thoughtful temperance leaders in both the earlier 
and later periods of the nineteenth century. One searches in 


LOCAL OPTION 359 


vain the reports of the great national temperance conventions, 
held at intervals through the century and which were so influential 
in molding the reform, for any important advocacy of local 
option. At best it was regarded as merely a temporary expedient 
to be utilized only in those states where statewide prohibition 
seemed hopeless for a long time to come. 

Prior to 1893 there had been no general agitation or widespread 
propaganda in favor of local option by the temperance people. 
Their constant objective was state and national prohibition. 

It was not until after the organization of the Anti-Saloon 
League that it was seriously advocated by any considerable 
group of anti-liquor workers. 

In the eighties, outside of the southern states, where localism 
was strong, it was looked upon by many as chiefly a plan pro- 
moted by politicians and liquor supporters to head oft prohibition. 

It was not until the period 1900 to 1913 that the debate on local 
option between the two temperance groups became prominent. 

The Anti-Saloon League was devoting most of its energies to 
local option and the Prohibitionists were working directly for 
state and national prohibition. 

Although in numerous local campaigns the overwhelming 
percentage of party Prohibitionists voted and worked for local 
no-license, in fact in a large proportion of local communities 
they furnished the most active workers in carrying those com- 
munities dry, nevertheless they recognized very serious objections 
to local option as a method for the solution of the liquor problem. 


DEFECTS OF LOCAL OPTION 


Among the defects of local option were: 

1. It was too local to cope with a great national problem. 
The liquor traffic was organized in state and national organiza- 
tions. It was protected by state and national laws. Being legally 
entrenched in adjacent territory, it was able to maintain a base 
of operations from whence it could send across the local bound- 
aries continuous supplies of liquor. Likewise, through propa- 
ganda, financial resources and political influence it was constantly 
able to keep up a continuous warfare against a local no-license 
policy. A local solution was regarded by the Prohibitionists as 
unappropriate, unadapted and ineffective to deal with the problem 
because of the essentially national nature of the problem. The 
liquor traffic was able to concentrate its national resources at 


360 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


any strategic local point and where necessary frequently brought 
in floating voters and colonized them to carry local option 
elections. 

In 1904, before the later wave of local option reached its 
height, the report of the liquor trade’s National Protective Bureau 
stated that during the year it participated in two hundred and 
thirty-seven elections held in twenty-five different states and 
that it had been successful in 74 per cent of the contests. In its 
report of 1912 the contests were “too numerous to mention” and 
nearly all, especially the important ones, had resulted favorably. 

2. The Prohibitionists taught that from the standpoint of 
the differentiation of functions between state government and 
local government the question of the perpetuation of the liquor 
trafic was not a proper question to be referred to local sub- 
divisions, such as residence districts, wards, towns, townships and 
counties. There are but two units of sovereignty in the United 
States. The federal government is sovereign with respect to the 
subjects within its jurisdiction and the state governments are 
sovereign with respect to those matters reserved to the states. 
The local subdivisions, even great municipalities, are subordinate 
governments. The leading authorities in the field of municipal 
government, as well as numerous court decisions, hold the view 
that the governments of even the largest cities are dependent gov- 
ernments whose powers are determined by a superior government. 
This is true not only of cities in the United States but almost 
the world over. 

In the separation of functions between state and local govern- 
ments the almost universal principle of demarcation is that only 
those functions are assigned to the local governments which are 
chiefly, 1f not entirely, of particular and local interest. Such 
matters as streets, sewers, waterworks, parks, libraries and similar 
local improvements are regarded as matters for the satisfaction 
of local needs and only indirectly affect the people of the state 
as a whole. These are regarded as municipal functions. 

Even under the principle of municipal home rule, which in 
certain cities has been a shibboleth in some campaigns, the home 
rule consists of the right to regulate those matters of administra- 
tion which chiefly affect local interests alone. Its principal field 
of operation has been in the sphere of local improvements. 

The question as to whether a particular matter is a municipal 
function or a state function varies under different conditions but, 
“the reason why it may or may not be regarded as municipal is 


LOCAL OPTION 361 


that it is, or is not, under existing economic and social conditions, 
of distinctly local interest.” * 

This being the general principle recognized by the leading 
political scientists, the Prohibitionists emphasized that the ques- 
tion of licensing or prohibiting the liquor traffic was by no means 
merely of local interest. It was a matter which supremely affected 
the health, order, safety and welfare of the state as a whole. 

Said Judge Pitman in Alcohol and the State: 


The state is the normal unit of sovereignty, and it is opposed to 
sound theories of government to transfer to local fractions the 
decision of a question of such general and far-reaching importance 
as the policy to be pursued toward the liquor traffic... . If the 
drink traffic is indeed the destroyer of national wealth, the clog that 
drags down labor, the poisoner of the public health, the enemy of 
the home, the feeder of pauperism, the stimulant of crime, the foe 
of Christian civilization and the degenerator of the race, then the 
State owes clearly to each community of its citizens its best wisdom 
and its most persistent energy in the repression of such a trat- 
fic, and it may not rightfully or even prudently abandon the vir- 
tuous, or, for that matter, the vicious, citizen anywhere to the rule 
of a debased locality.” 


3. The theory of local option was wrong. It was wrong for 
the state to surrender its sovereignty, evade its duty and divest 
itself of responsibility on a matter vitally affecting the weltare 
of the state by shifting the decision to localities, a procedure 
making it practically certain that some localities would vote to 
perpetuate plague centers. On no other similar subject was local 
option customary. Gambling, lotteries, stealing, prostitution and 
all similar offenses against society were dealt with by the state 
upholding a uniform standard of morals throughout its juris- 
diction. | 

If horse stealing and gambling were left to local option there 
might be communities which would license gambling and horse 
stealing. The outlawing of an evil within a state should not be 
conditional on all subdivisions being opposed to the evil. 

From the standpoint that it is wrong for a subordinate unit to 
be given the option to vote a wrong up or down, local option 
was frequently compared to squatter sovereignty, a term con- 
spicuous in the days of the conflict over slavery. 

4. Local option was closely allied with the license system. 
It was offered as an adjunct to the license system in order to make 


1F, J, Goodnow, City Government in the United States, p. 36. 
2R. C, Pitman, Alcohol and the State, p. 209. 


362 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


that system tolerable. License and local option have always 
been closely correlated. 

When, in the middle eighties, the prohibition movement had 
the prospect of sweeping the country, it was high license coupled 
with local option which was concentrated upon by the enemies of 
prohibition in order to head it off. 3 | 

5. Local option implied that the perpetuation of the saloon 
was of neutral moral quality to be voted up or down at the whim 
of each local subdivision. It implied that to license a saloon was 
perfectly proper provided the majority of voters within a certain 
area voted to do so. It lacked a high moral quality which was 
frequently reflected in the lack of moral acuteness in its advo- 
cates, This partly accounted for the great gulf which existed be- 
tween the moral power, consecration and discernment of the Pro- 
hibitionists and the restricted vision of the local optionists. 

6. The educational effect of local option was in the wrong 
direction. Judge Pitman said: 


Legislation of this kind breaks the educational force of law. 
What can be voted up or down by the people of a village or a 
county, what is right in one district and wrcng in another, loses its 
moral significance. 


Professor A. A. Hopkins, one of the clearest thinkers on this 
question said: 


Local option breaks the educational force and influence of law. 

It weakens the moral significance of choice between right and 
wrong. 

It blunts the public conscience, by permitting independent moral 
standards which antagonize each other. 

It allows a vicious majority in unwholesome centers of population 
to enthrone vice and assert lawful power. 


7. Local option as usually applied was too temporary. If a 
no-license policy was adopted for a year or two, it was common 
for the saloon-keepers to continue to sell illicitly or, if they did 
not sell, they would frequently hold on to their saloons, working 
all the while to come back at the next election. The liquor men 
needed only to marshal their forces at the next election when, by 
misleading propaganda, by a little more bribery, a little more 
purchasing and colonizing of voters, they could return to power. 

Owing to the temporary character of local option as experi- 
enced in many states at different periods it has been described as 
“an armed truce.”’ Because of its incentive to the saloonist to 


LOCAL OPTION 363 


seek to return, Dr. Scomp declared: “Local option nurtures a 
viper in its own bosom.” 

This objection does not apply to those laws which provided 
for continuous outlawry. Tennessee was a state which made no 
provision for the return of the saloon when once outlawed. 
There the proper term for its system was local prohibition rather 
than local option, and the distinction must be kept clear. 

The history of the progress of local prohibition in Tennessee 
is probably the most interesting and unique of any state. In 
that state there gradually developed, from the Reconstruction 
period, a system based on the inherent conflict between the school 
and the saloon. 

When the schools were being established following the Civil 
War, in granting charters to various institutions, the Legislature 
frequently included provisions prohibiting the vending of liquor 
within one or two miles of the schools chartered. In 1887 the 
Legislature passed a four-mile law, prohibiting the saloon within 
four miles of a school save in an incorporated town. 

In 1897, the four-mile law was extended to apply to all towns 
under 2,000 inhabitants which thereafter should be incorporated. 
This was the signal for the small towns to throw up their charters 
and reincorporate. 

In 1903, the four-mile law was extended to towns of 5,000 
inhabitants resulting in similar reincorporations, until, after a 
few months only fourteen wet centers remained in the state, eight 
over 5,000 and six under. In 1907 it was extended to apply to all 
cities of less than 150,000 with the result that local prohibition 
applied everywhere except in the three largest cities and two 
smaller places. In 1909 a state prohibition law was passed.° 

8. Another defect of local option was that it failed to provide 
a remedy for the evils of the liquor traffic where the remedy was 
most needed. It surrendered to the liquor traffic the centers of 
population and power. It concentrated the temperance energy 
where least needed and diverted it from the centers of liquor in- 
fluence where it was most needed. On the other hand, it con- 
centrated the rum power in its strongholds, allowing it to en- 
trench itself. Said John B. Finch: “It is treason to God and 
humanity to advocate a policy of the state turning the helpless 
in the great cities over into the hands of the drunkard makers 
by local option.”’ On the other hand, statewide prohibition gave 
the temperance people in the great cities the reinforcement of the 
temperance votes in the rural sections. 


3 See National Prohibitionist, April 9, 1908. Article by Professor H. A, Scomp 
on Local Prohibition. 


364 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The cities were the centers of influence, of fashion and of the 
organs of public opinion. They were the centers which also 
molded social custom to a large degree. Young people from 
rural no-saloon districts who went to the city for education or 
business were frequently swept into the swirl of the liquor en- 
vironment and carried on to their moral and physical destruc- 
tion. Multitudes of parents learned to their sorrow that the 
liquor question was not a local question. 

9. From a political standpoint, local option placed the dry 
forces at a great disadvantage. It permitted the liquor power 
to remain organized in the state as a whole and to maintain a safe | 
base of operation in the centers of population and influence. 

While the drys were concentrating their activities in carry- 
ing the local election, each in his own locality, and were split up 
in subdivisions, the wets were working both locally and in the 
state as a whole. Locally the wets had a double incentive, both 
to carry the election on the liquor referendum and also to elect 
local administrative officers who would give a lax enforcement 
against law violators. 

Besides, being entrenched in the larger centers, they had an ad- 
vantage in having a common policy over the larger area. Conse- 
quently they were better able to dominate the policy of the larger 
unit. 

This ability of the wets to dominate politics was especially 
evident in state legislatures... There they had an advantage 
through their influence in populous centers. Through intimida- 
tion, alliances, intrigue, wielding the balance of power and other 
methods of underground politics they were generally able to 
achieve their purposes. As a result, in many cases they suc- 
ceeded in repealing option laws and also, in many cases where 
some laws remained, they succeeded in preventing the enactment 
of suitable provisions to make them enforceable. 

Connecticut for some years boasted that one-half of the towns 
had driven the saloon from their own immediate limits but in the 
other half, which included the populous centers, the traffic en- 
trenched itself and dominated the politics of the state. 

Local option, by making local aspects paramount and sub- 
dividing the interests of the drys, tended to prevent the improve- 
ment of state politics and also to prevent the rise to high political 
position of those who were conspicuously dry. 

10. Local option, by concentrating upon the question of li- 
cense or no-license and neglecting the whole corps of officials 
who had to do with the enforcement of the law, was deficient in 


LOCAL OPTION 365 


that it did not of itself provide for responsible enforcement. A 
very frequent difficulty was that the town was voted dry and the 
town hall wet, the county was voted dry and the court house wet. 

It did not follow, as some mistakenly assumed, that, because 
a locality voted dry on the no-license question submitted sepa- 
rately, the officers would be favorable to no-license. To insure 
enforcement officials who would enforce required an alignment 
in behalf of dry candidates as well as in behalf of a dry policy. 
Such an alignment required substantially a local dry party. 

There were some cases where such local alignments were made. 
In these cases, as a rule, the best enforcement was obtained. But 
such cases comprised only a small fraction of the local no-license 
communities. They were the exception rather than the rule. 

11. Local option, at its maximum, failed to appreciably reduce 
the per capita consumption of liquor in the country as a whole. 
After all the efforts put forth in local option campaigns between 
1906 and 1913 the per capita consumption reached its maximum 
in I9QII, 22.81 gallons, and in 1913 it was 22.80 gallons, This 
was amazing considering the spread of local option in that period. 

There is no doubt that in those communities which voted no- 
license there was almost universally a decided reduction, but 
local option was unable to meet the problem as a whole. 

12. Local option was unable to effectively shut off the sources 
of liquor supplies. It left untouched the interstate commerce 
laws which permitted the introduction for personal use of all the 
liquors one could desire. 

Prior to 1913, when the Webb-Kenyon law was passed, there 
was no place in the whole United States where brewers, distillers 
and wholesale liquor establishments could not send their goods. 

Even saloons were left in close proximity. In 1907, in New 
York more than one-third of the townships were dry, but there 
were only two localities in the entire state as far distant as fifteen 
miles from a saloon. 

Even where local option achieved its greatest successes, the 
liquor traffic was entrenched in nearby strategic centers from 
which it was able to flood the surrounding districts. Frequently 
saloon men, driven out of the small towns, would move to the 
city and carry on a jug trade with their old customers. 

In Indiana, in 1910, although seventy of the ninety-two coun- 
ties had outlawed the saloons and the total dry majority in all 
the counties voting was over 65,000, nevertheless, the saloons re- 
mained in the strategic centers in twenty-two counties and these 


366 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


counties were so located that no part of the state was a great dis- 
tance away. 

With modern means of transportation and communication, 
the railroads, interurban cars, automobiles and telephones, local 
no-license was by its very nature ineffective. In such circum- 
stances the mere fact of an area being dry meant comparatively 
little. For this reason the white and black maps, picturing areas 
wet and dry, had very little value and were often misleading. 
These maps were widely circulated by the chief organization pro- 
moting local option. In 1911, the Presbyterian General Assem- 
bly, in its resolutions, called attention to the fact that such maps 
were misleading as to the actual liquor situation. 

These maps represented the territory of Indiana as being nine- 
tenths dry. Although the county option elections there, in 1909, 
were about the most successful of any state, the number of saloons 
was reduced only from 4,360 to 3,329, a decrease of only 23 
per cent. There remained in the state more than three-fourths as 
many saloons as there were before. Even with this reduction 
there were 18 per cent more saloons in Indiana than there had 
been eighteen years before, in 1893, when the local option effort 
began, as compared with an increase in population of 19 per cent. 
In other words after all the effort for local option and county 
option in which seventy of the ninety-two counties of the state 
voted out the saloon, there remained substantially as many lh- 
censed saloons in Indiana in proportion to population as there 
were before the local option effort began. 

13. The effect of its advocacy was to make many people believe 
that the liquor question was merely a local one. 

One commonly noted effect, particularly in the earlier period, 
was the engendering of local selfishness. After a community 
had voted out the open saloon, there was a tendency for people to 
say : “We have voted out the saloons in our town, let other towns 
do the same.” It was notably harder to interest people of no- 
saloon towns in the national program of the Prohibition party 
than in other places having a similar type of population. 

14. In a number of states local option was the chief obstacle 
to state prohibition. The advocates of state prohibition had to 
meet the opposition of both local optionists and liquor dealers. 

In Georgia, in 1884 and 1885, there was a widespread demand 
for state prohibition but it was headed off by the passage of a 
general local option law. Likewise in both Georgia and Mis- 
sisSippi 1n 1901-1902 prohibition was postponed because of local 
option. 


LOCAL OPTION 367 


In 1903 Vermont and New Hampshire forsook their prohibi- 
tory policy as a result, largely, of the propaganda for local op- 
tion, the propaganda having been fostered by the lax enforce- 
ment of prohibition by unfriendly administrations, Their experi- 
ence proved the great superiority of prohibition, even poorly en- 
forced, over local option. An enormous increase in drunkenness 
occurred. Comparing the commitments of men repeatedly ar- 
rested for drunkenness, the statistics show that in Vermont during 
the last four years of prohibition 2,175 were committed. During 
the first four years of local option 5,554 were committed, an in- 
crease of 155 per cent. 

In New Hampshire, the number of criminal drunkards reported 
steadily increased from 473 in 1902 under prohibition to 2,186 
in 1906 under license and local option, an increase of 362 per 
cent. 

Between 1908 and 1912, in a number of states local option un- 
doubtedly postponed state prohibition. This was indicated by the 
defeat of prohibition in such conspicuous local option states as 
Florida in 1910, Oregon in 1911, and Texas in IGT; Vin’ Céxas, 
although twelve wet counties voted for state prohibition, eighteen 
of the dry counties voted against it. 

Several other states were content to adopt county option which, 
would probably have enacted prohibitory laws if it had not been 
for the support of county option by the Anti-Saloon League. 

In North Carolina, which in 1908 voted for state prohibition 
by a majority of over 44,000, one of the chief campaign docu- 
ments circulated by the wets in opposing prohibition was a reprint 
of an address first published by the Anti-Saloon League, written 
by its state superintendent only the year before, in which he had 
vigorously advocated county option from the standpoint of local 
self-government. 

In an additional respect was local option a hindrance to 
prohibition because it kept the dry voters of a state disunited, 
disintegrated, voting merely by local districts, whereas, if they 
had voted as a state unit, their aggregate vote would have sup- 
plied more than the majority needed to carry the state for pro-~ 
hibition. In several states the total of the local no-license votes 
was more than a majority although all that was obtained by the 
elections was scattered local no-license. Even in Massachusetts, 
in at least four elections, in the eighties and nineties the sum total 
of the no-license vote exceeded that of the license vote. 

Furthermore, as will be shown, state prohibition was demon- 
strated in many of the elections to be stronger than local option. 


368 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


In state after state, counties that could not be carried for no- 
license were carried for prohibition. So the aggregate of local 
no-license votes, in most cases, did not equal the real strength 
of the anti-liquor sentiment. 

The points above given summarize some of the objections to 
local option as viewed by the Prohibitionists. That local no- 
license, by removing the open saloon, was beneficial and an im- 
provement over license conditions was acknowledged, but if to 
secure local no-license meant the adoption of the local option 
system it was “snatching a limited and transient advantage to 
lose, or at least postpone, a wider and permanent one.” # 


WAS LOCAL OPTION A STEP? 


There remains to be investigated the soundness of the claim 
that local option was a necéssary step to state and national pro- 
hibition. 

There is a group who argue that national prohibition was 
achieved in the United States through a series of successive terri- 
torial steps. ‘Their interpretation, as expressed by one of their 
writers, is: 


The first line of attack was the saloons in the rural districts. .. . 
The next step, naturally, was against the liquor traffic in the incor- 
porated villages... . The next step was the effort to clean up the 
rural counties. ... The next step in the states containing large 
cities was the fight against the liquor traffic in these centers of popu- 
lation, while the next step in the rural states was naturally for 
statewide prohibition. The final step was the submission and ratifi- 
cation of the Eighteenth Amendment. 


It might be added that members of this group frequently gave 
the impression that all that is important in the history of the 
temperance movement began in 1893 when the Anti-Saloon 
League was organized. 

Some of the temperance workers in foreign countries have 
been led to believe that such a step process is essential because 
they have been told that America secured prohibition in this 
manner. 

Such an interpretation ignores the influence of the great pro- 
hibition movements of the fifties and eighties. Votes taken in 
twenty states in the eighties showed that more than nine-tenths 
of a voting majority were in favor of prohibition at that time, 
before the Anti-Saloon League was organized. It ignores the 


4Fernald, Economics of Prohibition, p. 131. 


LOCAL OPTION 869 


great groups which were working for national prohibition through 
many years. It ignores the great church denominations which 
for many years upheld the standard of national prohibition. It 
ignores the fact that the Anti-Saloon League itself in its pur- 
pose, as expressed in its constitution, and in its national conven- 
tions was holding up the objective, more or less remote, of the 
entire suppression of the liquor traffic. It ignores the fact that 
the local option movement had reached its limits without ap- 
preciably reducing the national per capita consumption of liquor, 
and that permanent, decided progress was made only after all 
groups concentrated upon the demand for national prohibition. 

It ignores altogether the service and far-reaching influence of 
the party Prohibitionists throughout the country, their vision, 
their burning passion, their consecration of all their powers of 
citizenship to the cause of effective national prohibition. 

To what extent was local option a step to state prohibition? 

I. To find the answer to this question it is necessary, first, to 
examine state by state those states which adopted prohibition, 

In the prohibition movement of the fifties it was a negligible 
factor. If it was a factor at all it was merely as an experiment 
which had turned out to be unsuccessful, a discarded mechanism, 
even in the later forties.® 

In the eighties, in none of the states adopting prohibition in 
that period did it figure as a step. So in the earlier periods there 
is no argument for the step theory whatsoever, 

The period where we get the purest effect of the local option 
step process was in the period preceding 1914. In I913 the Anti- 
Saloon League, which formerly had worked chiefly for local op- 
tion, came out for national prohibition. Al] anti-liquor organ- 
izations joined together in cooperative effort and that year marks 
the beginning of the big drive for national prohibition. There- 
aiter, the increased emphasis in favor of national prohibition 
served to bring the whole country to that standard. The na- 
tional phase rather than the local was the impelling factor, so a 
study of the effects of local option must be made in the period 
before that time. 

Of the nine states which had obtained state prohibition prior 
to 1914 and still maintained it, in four of them local option had 
not existed to any important degree, Maine, Kansas, North Da- 
kota, and Oklahoma. In the fifth, Tennessee, as explained here- 
inbefore, the system was unique. It was local prohibition in con- 
tradistinction to local option. In a sixth, North Carolina, al- 


5 John Marsh, Temperance Recollections, p. 16t. 


370 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


though sixty-eight of the ninety-eight counties were no-license, 
local option, as mentioned above, was the chief obstacle to pro- 
hibition. 

In a seventh, West Virginia, although thirty-seven of the 
fifty-five counties were dry, many of them for years, there had 
been a thorough education on the state and national aspects and 
the number of dry counties was overshadowed by the fact that 
fifty-two of the fifty-five voted for statewide prohibition, fifteen 
more than had voted dry under local option, 

Georgia and Mississippi, the other two states, were the most 
typical local option states and it was these two states together 
with Virginia, which furnished the chief basis for the unfounded 
generalization of the “step” theory described above. 

A glimpse of local option in Georgia in historical perspective 
is quite illuminating. Although, beginning in 1833, there had 
been certain forms of local option and considerable special legis- 
lation providing for local prohibition the general local option law 
was enacted in 1885. 

Professor H. A. Scomp of Emory College, Georgia, the author 
of the leading book on the earlier history of temperance reform 
in the South, who was one of the ablest thinkers in the history 
of the movement, tells us that in 1884-1885 the demand for a 
general prohibition law was accumulating, “ready to overleap all 
bounds and tear in pieces all opposition.” Then the temperance 
forces were a unit working for a common end. 

But instead of obtaining prohibition a local option law was 
passed. Professor Scomp said: 


The thunder peal died away in low mutterings ever and anon 
from a county here and there over the state. Temperance was 
turned to the counties and ceased knocking at the doors of the 
statute making power. . 

The wisest local option temperance men expected to use the 
measure as a stepping stone to general prohibition. “Let us work 
on, redeeming county after county, until not more than a dozen 
liquor strongholds be left, then with one grand coup d'etat we will 
sweep the state.” Such was the popular delusion. On the other 
hand, the rum power sagaciously conjectured that local option might 
be used as a breakwater against the temperance tide about to flood 
the state. To gain time and scatter their Opponents’ forces was 
their shrewd policy. Local option might stave off the final doom. 
So it became the law....A halt was called, and temperance 
enthusiasm was allowed to expend itself in crushing the hydra’s 
heads in the counties only to find the task perpetually renewed. The 


LOCAL OPTION 371 


prohibition line was broken and rum still had its hand upon the 
legislating powers. 

Local option left citadels here and there in the hands of the 
Jebusites, though in the midst of Israel, and from those hilltops 
the fires to Moloch still burned as brightly as ever, and the people 
continued to be seduced and defiled by the profaning presence.° 


Counties oscillated from wet to dry and dry to wet. The 
question was never settled. The liquor men outlawed in a county 
constantly looked forward to resuming their traffic. Sometimes 
they merely moved across county boundaries to adjacent territory. 

Local option kept the question constantly in politics. Of the 
one hundred and eleven members of the House who voted for 
local option in 1885 only about twenty were returned to the same 
branch of the next Legislature. Local option permitted the liquor 
power to remain entrenched in state politics and the champions of 
prohibition were steadily relegated to the shades of private life 
by the political bosses who found that such men were not politi- 
cally available. 

Thus the situation went on for over twenty years. The antici- 
pated step was postponed for over half a generation. Although, 
finally, about one hundred and twenty-five of the one hundred 
and forty-six counties reached the point of voting no-license it 
cannot be said that the adoption of state prohibition was due to 
the steady adding of county to county. Rather it was the 
awakening to the realization that under local option the counties 
were not being permitted to exercise their boasted local self- 
government and were not able to free themselves from the clutches 
of the liquor power. In the words of a current colloquialism the 
wet counties were “slopping over” on the dry counties. Dry in 
name, they were not so in reality. A disgusting jug trade was 
radiating from the cities and no community was free from the 
ravages of the liquor traffic. 

Finally, in 1907, a menacing race riot, with the rioters in- 
flamed by alcohol, startled the capital city and the state. The 
better citizens became aroused. Under the influence of a moral 
uprising led by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and 
men with strong prohibition principles the Legislature determined 
to prohibit the traffic throughout the whole state. 

It was because of the inadequacy of local option, because it 
had been demonstrated to be incapable of meeting the problem 
that Georgia abandoned it and adopted prohibition. So in 

6 The Voice, March 22, 1888; The Political Prohibitionist for 1888, p. 11. 


372 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Georgia, local option, after many years of trial, was of benefit 
chiefly as a demonstration of how nor to solve the problem. 

This leaves Mississippi the only one of the states adopting 
prohibition in the pre-national prohibition period which might 
furnish a justifiable argument for the local option step theory. 
But there local option was used as a means to head off prohibition. 
The leading history of prohibition in Mississippi states that in 
1886, the year the local option law was enacted, “beyond all doubt, 
the most substantial citizens favored prohibition.” * It also Says: 
“In the years clustering close around 1886, as well as in that year 
itself, many conventions were held all over the state, including a 
statewide convention once a year, and also hundreds of fine pro- 
hibition articles appeared in the various papers in the state 
friendly to prohibition.” ® As in other local option states, these 
great meetings and articles died out. In 1890, when a state con- 
stitutional convention was held, strong effort was made to get 
prohibition incorporated in the state constitution. But local 
option helped to prevent it. In 1902 there was another move- 
ment for state prohibition but it failed. It thus took twenty-two 
years to take the step from the passage of the local option law 
in 1886 to the adoption of state prohibition in 1908. 

Virginia, which voted for state prohibition in 1914, probably 
more than any other state furnishes an apparent argument for 
the step theory. Its record is exceptional in that more stages 
were involved in the process of reaching prohibition than in any 
other state. Since 1886 there had been a local option law which 
had been supplemented by laws passed in 1904 and 1908. By 
1914 of the one hundred counties, sixty were no-license, although 
these contained only five cities with a population of five thousand 
or more. 

The Virginia Legislature did not pass a prohibitory law, neither 
did it submit the question to the people. The complicated process 
was as follows: | 

A. The Legislature passed an enabling act permitting the 
people to vote for or against prohibition conditional upon the 
obtaining of signatures requesting such a vote equal in number 
to one-fourth of the voters at the preceding state election. 

B. A petition for such signatures was circulated and an 
election called. 

C. The people voted for the principle of prohibition on Sep- 


7T. J. Bailey, Prohibition in Mississippi, 1917, p. 60. 
8 Ibid., p. 60. 
9 Ibid., p. 80. 


LOCAL OPTION 373 


tember 22, 1914, by a majority of 30,365, nearly 60 per cent 
voting in favor of prohibition. 

D, The law for carrying the principle into effect had to be 
enacted by the Legislature although certain features were included 
in the enabling act. 

FE. The interval between the vote of the people and the going 
into effect of the law was over twenty-five months, the longest 
interval of any state, with one exception. The law went into 
effect November 1, 1916. 

fF’, The lax provisions of the law, it permitting the manu- 
facture of certain classes of liquor for sale outside the state 
and permitting the bringing in of liberal quantities of liquor for 
personal use, made it in substance an anti-saloon law rather than 
a prohibition law. The importation from other states was 
remedied only by federal legislation when Congress passed the 
Reed Amendment in 1917. 

Thus the requirement of both special legislation and a petition 
to bring on a vote, the long interval, and the partial provisions 
of the law constituted three stages or steps additional to those 
customary in most of the states. In Virginia, going from local 
option to prohibition was more like an obstacle race than a step. 
One of the reasons seems to have been that some of the leaders of 
the Anti-Saloon League there were obsessed to an extraordinary 
degree by the step theory and permitted that theory to dominate 
their program. : 

2. Local option was subject to such continuous, and some- 
times violent, fluctuations and reactions that instead of being a 
step toward prohibition, it frequently led in the opposite direction. 

The earlier waves and recessions in a number of states have 
been referred to. There remains to be studied the period pre- 
ceding 1914. A study follows, comparing the number of dry 
counties in the different states in 1914 with the number in 1908. 
In two New England states, instead of counties, the cities and 
towns are taken as the basis of comparison. The year 1908 is 
taken because that was the first year of a series of years when 
adequate facts are easily accessible, 

The results show that in ten states there was a decrease in 
the number of dry counties. In three, Ohio, Indiana and Oregon, 
there was a very decided falling off from previous years. In 
Ohio there was a decrease in dry counties from sixty-two out of 
eighty-eight in 1910, to forty-five in 1914, due to dry counties 
voting wet. This was followed by a reduction to eighteen dry 
counties in 1916, due to the repeal of the county option law. 


374 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


In Indiana and Oregon the falling off was due to the repeal 
of the county option law, Indiana falling from seventy dry coun- 
ties in 1909 to twenty-four in 1912 and thirty in 1914. In 
Oregon the dry counties fell from twenty-one in 1908 and twenty- 
three in 1909, to five in 1914. 

Other recessions were: Illinois, thirty-six to thirty-three; Mis- 
souri, seventy-seven to seventy-four; Colorado, eleven to ten; 
California, five to one, and Washington, ten to six,?° 

In Massachusetts there was a decline from seventeen no-license 
cities in 1908, and twenty in 1909, to fourteen in 1914. No- 
license towns fell from two hundred and sixty to two hundred 
and forty-seven. In Connecticut the dry towns decreased from 
ninety-six to eighty-seven, out of one hundred and sixty-eight in 
the state, and the dry towns did not include any large towns. 

As against ten states showing decreases in the number of dry 
counties there were seven states showing increases, The largest 
increase was in Michigan where the number rose from one in 
1908 to fifty in 1911, and decreased to thirty-three in 1914. By 
1915 a little less than a third of the saloons of Michigan had been 
closed under local option. By the time state prohibition went into 
effect in 1918 forty-five of the eighty-three counties had voted 
out the saloon, but there remained 3,285 saloons and 79 breweries 
which did not hesitate to sell liquor in so-called dry territory, 
wherever they could find purchasers. 

The next largest increase was in Virginia where the dry 
counties increased from fifty in 1908 to sixty-six in 1914. But 
here the increase in dry counties was accompanied, in the later 
years of local option, by an increase in saloons in the state as a 
whole. In 1910 there were about six hundred saloons in the 
state. In 1911 there were about six hundred and eighty saloons 
and one hundred and sixty-four other liquor centers, including 
sixty hotels, sixteen social clubs, fifty-three distilleries, ten brewer- 
ies, fourteen wholesale liquor dealers and eleven dispensaries, 
making eight hundred and forty-four in all. In 1914, when the 
state-wide prohibition election was held, there were nine hundred 


10 The information upon which this study was made was obtained chiefly 
from the annual Year Books of the Anti-Saloon League. The amount of dry terri- 
tory in a state in a mentioned year is that given in the Year Book for that 
year and is presumed to be the area dry at the beginning of that year. This may 
not be true in all cases but inasmuch as most of the data used is for the purpose 
of comparison the general conclusions are not seriously affected even though 
in some cases the data may belong to the year preceding instead of the year men- 
tioned. In some cases the figures may not be absolutely accurate but where other 
or later information has indicated a correction it has been made. In general the 
figures of the leading organization advocating local option have been assumed toa 
be substantially correct. 


LOCAL OPTION 375 


and fourteen liquor licenses, the increase having been due prob- 
ably to the larger concentration in the wet centers and the ex- 
pansion of the liquor traffic in the centers where licensed. 

In Florida the dry counties increased from thirty-five to thirty- 
seven; in Arkansas, from fifty-eight to sixty-three; and in Texas, 
from one hundred and fifty-two to one hundred and seventy- 
three out of two hundred and forty-nine. But in none of these 
states was local option a step to prohibition, as all these defeated 
state prohibition in this period; Florida, in 1910; Texas, in IgII, 
and Arkansas, in 1912. 

Furthermore, in Texas the number of dry cities having a popu- 
lation of over 10,000 fell from twelve in IQII to six in Igt4. 

Maryland and Nebraska made small gains, the former from 
ten counties to thirteen, and the latter from twenty-one to twenty- 
nine, falling again in 1915 to twenty-seven. 

Idaho was practically the only state which made a decided step 
toward state prohibition. There the number of counties increased 
from fifteen to twenty-one out of thirty-three. Idaho was a 
young, progressive, western state with a unique record, Start. 
ing without any local option law and known as all saloon terri: 
tory in 1909, it advanced to statutory prohibition in 1915, with 
every political party in the state supporting prohibition by party 
platform. In 1916 it placed prohibition in the state constitution 
by a vote of 90,576 to 35,456. 

The brevity of the period with which they stopped with local 
option indicates that the splendid people of Idaho, as well as the 
better citizens in the other states, were not seeking merely local 
option, but they were earnestly seeking to be rid of the whole 
liquor traffic. The movement in Idaho was primarily a pro- 
hibition movement hindered, for a short time only, by local option 
due to the fact that at first the Legislature compromised on local 
option when the people wanted prohibition. In other words, local 
option was a compromise by the Legislature of 1909, but the 
people were not satisfied with that and they kept up the fight 
until they committed all the political parties to the principle and 
secured prohibition. 

In five states the number of dry counties remained the same. 
In one the number went up and then down, and the rest of the 
states were either prohibition states or where the laws were of 
little importance. 

From this survey the conclusion is inevitable that the effect of 
local option as a step to state prohibition, prior to the time of 
the concerted movement toward national prohibition, was neg- 


376 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


ligible. Local option as a method had reached its maximum and 
was beginning its decline prior to 1914. The predominant 
trend in the local option states was in the direction opposite to 
prohibition. 

3. The step away from prohibition was still more accentuated 
in the cities. 

Of the thirty-one cities in the non-prohibition states having a 
population of over 25,000, which at some period between 1908 
and 1912 were under local no-license, only twelve were able to 
maintain a continuous no-license policy until 1914. Nineteen of 
the thirty-one swung back to the saloon. Three of them subse- 
quently oscillated back again to no-license, but sixteen of the 
thirty-one remained wet until state or national prohibition was 
achieved. 

The striking fact is that, outside of Massachusetts, only three 
cities of over 25,000 in all of the non-prohibition states of the 
whole country maintained a no-license policy for any length of 
time. 

These three were Berkeley and Pasadena in California and 
Shreveport in Louisiana. Of these, Berkeley and Pasadena 
should not be credited to the local option method. Both were 
residence communities adjacent to great cities. Berkeley is the 
seat of the state university, around which a dry zone was estab- 
lished by state law, and Pasadena had never had a saloon in its 
history. So, outside of Massachusetts, local option can be 
credited with the dry policy of just one large city, Shreveport, 
Louisiana, with a population of 28,015, which adopted local no- 
license in 1910. 

Of the nine Massachusetts cities most were close to Boston 
and all were adjacent to unlimited liquor supplies. 

According to the census of 1910 there were two hundred and 
twenty-nine cities in the United States of over 25,000 population. 
Of these, including the nine in Massachusetts, by 1914 there 
were just ten dry as the net result of local option, after all the 
years of labor in its behalf. At the same time there were twenty 
cities of that size in the states having state prohibition. 

4. Another phase of the step theory should be considered, and 
that is the length of time which it took after the passage of a 
local option law before prohibition was secured. Note especially 
the record of even those states which are chiefly cited as examples 
of the step contention. In Georgia it took twenty-two years from 
the passage of the general local option law in 1885 to the adoption 
of state prohibition in 1907. In Mississippi it took twenty-two 


LOCAL OPTION 377 


years, from 1886 to 1908; in Virginia, twenty-eight years, from 
1886 to 1914; in Texas, forty-three years, from 1875 to 1918; in 
Kentucky, forty-five years, from 1874 to 1919; in Florida, thirty- 
one years, 1887 to 1918. In other words in almost the entire 
South the more appropriate characterization during a long period 
was that local option was a status rather than a step. 

In the New England states, Massachusetts had voted on no- 
license every year since 1881 with no permanent progress. Con- 
necticut had had town option for a generation with very little 
improvement. Other local option states never took the step. 
Further illustrations are unnecessary. 

Foreign countries which might be misled to enter upon a step 
program should take these facts into consideration. 

5. That local option as a step was not needed was demon- 
strated by the fact that several of the states which had not had 
local option of any consequence rolled up big majorities for 
prohibition not only in the earlier periods but also in the later 
period. 

Arizona, with only two dry counties, adopted prohibition the 
first time it was submitted in 1gra. Montana, with one dry 
county, carried prohibition in 1916 by a majority of 28,886. 
Wyoming and Nevada, each without a dry county and regarded 
as exceedingly wet, adopted prohibition by large proportional 
majorities the first time they had a referendum, in 1918. In 
Wyoming every county gave a majority for prohibition. 

These states all disprove the claim that local option as a step 
was necessary. 

6. Local option was not a step in the states which gave the 
largest percentage of votes for prohibition. 

Of the twenty-two states adopting prohibition by popular vote 
in the period 1907 to 1919 there were five which gave a vote of 
7O per cent or more in favor of prohibition. Of these five giving 
the largest proportional vote for prohibition not one was a typical 
local option state. Of the three having the highest percentage 
of prohibition votes, Wyoming, 75-2 per cent; New Mexico, 73.1 
per cent, and Utah, 73 per cent, none had gone through the county 
option stage. The fourth, Idaho, with 71.7 per cent, has been 
discussed above, and the fifth, South Carolina, with ZL. 20 percent, 
was evidencing its revulsion against the dispensary system. 

7. Not only was local option not a step but it hindered the 
attainment of prohibition because of its own inherent defects and 
limitations. It did not elicit the full strength of the anti-liquor 
sentiment. In the various popular votes that have been taken the 


378 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


election returns show that the people would rather vote for state 
prohibition than for local no-license because it was recognized 
to be more effective. In nearly every local option state, counties 
that could not be carried for no-license were carried for state 
prohibition. Also counties where not even an attempt had been 
made to carry no-license under local option gave majorities for 
prohibition. 

In every former county option state, with one exception, the 
results were uniform, that is, state prohibition carried more 
counties than did county option. In North Carolina in 1908, 
sixty-eight counties were dry but seventy-six gave majorities for 
prohibition, In Florida in 1910, thirty-five counties were dry 
but forty-three of the forty-seven voted for prohibition. In the 
same state in 1918, every county voted for prohibition. 

In West Virginia in 1912, thirty-seven were dry and fifty-two 
voted for prohibition. In Oregon the maximum number which 
local option had made no-license was twenty-three, but prohibi- 
tion carried thirty-two of the thirty-four counties, 

In Virginia in 1914, sixty-six counties were no-license, state 
prohibition carried seventy-one. 

In Michigan, no-license at its maximum carried fifty, but pro- 
hibition won in seventy-one of the eighty-three counties in TQIO. 

In Ohio, the maximum number of counties which had ever 
been dry had been sixty-three. That number had been reduced 
to forty-five under local option. But in the statewide vote for 
prohibition, in 1914, seventy counties out of eighty-eight were 
carried; in 1915, seventy-three; in 1917, seventy-six, and in the 
{918 vote seventy-nine of the eighty-eight counties gave pro- 
hibition majorities. 

The great mass of the people realized the strength of the argu- 
ment for statewide prohibition as being vastly superior to that 
for local or county no-license, 

Finally, taking the longer, historical view of the temperance 
reform, taking into account the remarkable prohibition movement 
of the eighties with the tremendous sentiment expressed in the 
statewide campaigns in twenty states in that period and the 
splendid educational influence of those campaigns; the attitude of 
the church in the early nineties with its high standard of national 
prohibition, its militant championship, and its emphasis on con- 
scientious political action; taking into account the vigor of the 
Prohibition party with its transcendent national moral issue and 
its capacity in those years to elicit widespread sacrificial service 
for a great national ideal; combining those factors and com- 


LOCAL OPTION 379 


paring them with the meager and temporary results of local 
option prior to 1914, after which the anti-liquor movement was 
again dominated by the objective of national prohibition, the 
local option period, 1893 to 1913, may be fittingly characterized 
as the wilderness period in the history of the temperance reform 
in the United States. 

For twenty years many people were wandering in the wilder- 
ness of local option. The nation suffered from the success of the 
designs of the politicians of the late eighties and early nineties 
in their scheme to divert the temperance reform away from pro- 
hibition into the channels of high license and local option, a 
scheme into which the Anti-Saloon League unwittingly played 
by diverting the emphasis of the church from its high standard 
of national prohibition to mere localism, and by apparently offer- 
ing a means of escape from the commanding ideal of a prohibition 
party to omni-partisanship—to the low standard of the old parties 
with their policies of duplicity and non-settlement. 

T’o those whose vision is circumscribed by a locality, or who 
take a short term view, local option may seem to have been a step. 
To those who make a study covering the nation and who take the 
longer, historical perspective, local option hindered and delayed 
national prohibition. 


SELECT REFERENCES 


Cyclopedia of Temperance and Prohibition, pp. 390-400. 

FERNALD, J. C—Economics of Prohibition, Chapter IX, 

FPrHLaNpt, A. F.—A Century of Drink Reform, Pp. 316-332. 

American Prohibition Year Book for 1907, pp. 62-67, 

American Prohibition Year Book for 1908, pp. 92-96. 

CuaFin, E, W.—The Master Method of the Great Reform, 
Lecture on One Standard of Morals. 

Hopkins, A. A.—“Local Option,” National Prolibitionist, May 
20, 1909. 

MEcarTNEY, F. M.—‘Local Option,” National Prohibitionist, 
August 29, 1909; also, editorial in the same number. 

Watkins, Aaron S.—“The Present Crisis in Non-Partisanism,” 
American Advance, May 20, 1911. 

CaLDERWoop, W. G.—‘The Objections to County Option,” Vin- 
dicator, February 3, 1912. 

FEeRcuson, W. P. F.—“Bring Up the Regiment,” Vindicator, 
October 31, 1913. 


oa 


Chapter X XI 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY AND THE ANTI-SALOON 
LEAGUE—THE PARTISAN VERSUS THE OMNI- 
PAD LISAN Abin 


No analysis of why the vote of the Prohibition party did not 
materially increase after the early years of the twentieth century 
can be adequate which does not take into consideration the rise of 
the Anti-Saloon League with its advocacy of the omni-partisan 
plan. 

The Prohibition party had to face the opposition of another 
organization which offered a seemingly easier method, one fol- 
lowing the line of least resistance, one which taught the voter 
to remain in his old party and work there. Moreover, it obtained 
access to the churches and gained an advantage by disseminating 
the idea that it was improper for a church to support a partisan 
movement. 

Before discussing the relationship between the Party and the 
Anti-Saloon League the position of the Prohibition party should 
again be brought to mind. 


“> The Prohibition party through the years had been preaching the 


necessity of the union of the good citizenship of the nation in a 
great national political party to obtain control of the government, 
national, state and local, and legislative, exesutive and judicial. 
Its purpose was to so administer the government that the liquor 
trafic might be suppressed and that the great social, economic, 
moral and political benefits which would accompany such an 
administration might be achieved. 

Among the fundamental and distinctive bases of the Pro- 
hibition party were: 

1, The liquor question is a national question in every respect, 
requiring for its settlement the agencies of the national as well 
as the state governments. 

2. The government of the United States is party government. 

3. The real settlement of the liquor question requires a political 
party unalterably committed to prohibition from the standpoint 


of party principle. The nature of the problem requires the con- 
380 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 381 


tinuous support of all branches of the government. The. party 
is the agency developed as a consequence of the American Con- 
stitutional system to provide for the cooperation of all branches 
of the government. 

4. Neither old party can effectively support prohibition. Each 
is organically disqualified from the very nature of its composition. 
Fach makes its basis of union issues foreign to prohibition and 
each desires both the wet vote and the dry vote. Each contains a 
radically opposing element of potential bolters. So long as a 
party depends for success upon retaining the votes of that element 
it will cater to and compromise with that vote—it cannot settle 
the liquor question. 

With these underlying bases there was demonstrated the neces- 
sity of a party for prohibition. The tremendous difficulties of 
building a new party were not minimized but the overwhelming 
need justified the labor and sacrifice. 

In behalf of the political party method it was urged that it was 
simple, direct, familiar to voters, in harmony with the American 
system of government, effective when placed in operation, and 
that it had the weight of historical precedent in the building of a 
new party to deal with the slavery question. 

The Prohibitionists’ concept of the party was that it was an 
essential agency for the effective operation of the government. 

It was necessary as the means by which an aroused public 
sentiment could function in a manner so as to utilize the powers 
of government to suppress the liquor traffic. This concept was 
the antithesis of that which looked upon a party as a faction, or 
merely as a means for obtaining the spoils of office, or as a 
corrupt machine to be avoided and spurned. , 

A party being regarded as the necessary agency for the attain- 
ment of a great, transcendent objective, voting for such a party 
became a civic duty. It was perfectly proper to advocate voting 
for such a party in a church or anywhere. Responsibility for the 
use of the ballot took on a deeper and fuller meaning. 

By the late eighties and early nineties the Prohibition party 
was making great headway in convincing the more thoughtful 
and conscientious class of voters of the soundness of its position. 
Nearly every prominent leader in any branch of temperance work 
was a Prohibitionist. Several attempts to organize counter-move- 
ments against the Prohibition party had but little support and 
met with early failure. 

The sentiment for the party was by no means measured by the 
vote. It was more indicated by the possibility of a break toward 


382 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the new party. Back in 1887 it had looked as if prohibition 
might become the dominant issue in the presidential campaign of 
1888. Several factors heretofore discussed headed it off, among 
which were the organization of the wets to defeat proposed state 
constitutional amendments and also the determination of the 
politicians to sidetrack prohibition by a compromise on high 
license and local option. 

The amendment defeats of the later eighties temporarily weak- 
ened the morale of the Prohibitionists. Then came the hard 
times and financial stringency accompanied by the Populist wave 
and the free silver conflict. This split every party, the Prohibi- 
tion party being hurt the worst. The split was, however, followed 
by a marvelous recovery, the campaign of 1896 having been the 
only campaign in the whole half century history of the party 
where another divisive issue seriously affected it. 

These hindrances did not affect the philosophy of the party. 
It was being increasingly accepted. As noted in the chapter on 
the Voice of the Churches, by 1892 most of the leading religious 
bodies were taking a very strong position in support, not only of 
national prohibition but also in support of a party for prohibition 
and they were emphasizing the-responsibility of the Christian 
citizen for the use of the ballot. The substance of a number of 
the church declarations was that a Christian citizen should not 
vote for a party which did not place itself on record in an attitude 
of open hostility to the saloon. Political righteousness had begun 
to be emphasized throughout the nation. 

Then came the Anti-Saloon League. It taught the present 
repression of the saloon with more or less emphasis on its ulti- 
mate suppression. Its vision was limited chiefly to the local 
saloon, and local option was its method, the scheme promoted by 
the old party politicians to head off the threatened growth of the 
Prohibition party. 

The League taught that voting for a party was not necessary. 
Voters might stay in their old parties and vote for “good men” 
in those parties. It ignored, if it did not substantially deny, 
the tremendous fact of party government. According to the 
Anti-Saloon League teaching it did not matter with which party 
aman voted. The policy of the party toward the liquor question 
or the party’s subserviency to the liquor oligarchy were matters 
of unconcern. Only the individual candidate counted. The bonds 
which held the candidate to his party, which gave him life politi- 
cally, were disregarded. Voters might remain in any party and 
still try to suppress the saloon. 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 383 


Here was a fundamental and inherent point of conflict between 
the League and the Party because it involved how the adherents 
of the respective organizations should vote. The conflict in- 
volved the use of the ballot, the supreme instrument of citizen- 
ship. The teaching of one organization was to vote one way— 
for the old party; the teaching of the other was to vote for the 
Prohibition party. Upon the crucial question of the use of the 
ballot the teachings of the two organizations were diametrically 
opposed. ee 

This conflict brought on by the League propaganda could not 
be brushed aside by any solemn homilies about cooperation, 
neither could it be glossed over by “‘avoiding subjects as to which 
we differ,’ as stated by one of the officers of the League to be its 
policy. 

If the League was correct, if the solution could be brought 
about by men staying in their old parties, it seemed almost a waste 
of energy to try to continue the difficult task of building a new 
party. 

Unless its contention was overcome the Prohibition party was 
bound to suffer because the omni-partisan plan followed the line 
of least resistance. People did not want to leave their accus- 
tomed party unless there was a compelling reason for leaving. 

Furthermore, if the League was correct, the moral argument 
for voting for a party committed to prohibition was undermined. 

In the later eighties and nineties many conscientious voters 
were being influenced by the Prohibition party’s teaching con- 
cerning the moral responsibility for the use of the ballot. 

Many of the partisan Republicans and Democrats who could 
not justify the actions of their party, some of them holding high 
ecclesiastical positions, were being made to feel very uneasy be- 
cause of the ticket they were voting. The omni-partisan plan 
offered great relief to such as these. One deplorable reactionary 
effect of the whole League movement was a letting down in the 
standards regarding the moral responsibility for the use of the 
ballot in the groups that followed the League. 

There is no doubt that the rise of the Anti-Saloon League was 
the chief factor in obstructing the growth of the Prohibition 
party. ‘The moral voters of the country were not prevented from 
voting with the Prohibition party by being told that the liquor 
trafic ought not to be abolished, nor yet by being told that other 
issues were more important. Those obstacles were easily sur- 
mountable. But they were prevented from joining the Prohibi- 
tion party by being told, and that by speakers from pulpits, that 


384 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


it was not necessary to join the Prohibition party to settle the 
liquor question but that their object could be accomplished by 
remaining in their old parties. 


EARLY HISTORY 


The Anti-Saloon League started at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1893 
among a group of people who had become interested in the 
passage of a township local option law in 1888. They were led 
by the Kev. Howard H. Russell, a graduate of the Oberlin 
Theological Seminary, of the class of 1888. They were earnest 
and sincere against the evils of the saloon without evidencing 
much vision of the problem or horizon beyond the evils of the 
local saloon. They were Republicans, and this is an important 
fact. 

Oberlin had been one of the foremost centers in the anti-slavery. 
movement. ‘lhe people there had formed such a deep attachment 
to the party which had overcome slavery that they were almost 
intolerant towards the Prohibition party. 

On several occasions Oberlin had exhibited an amazing an- 
tagonism toward the Prohibition party. Back in 1883 during 
the Ohio constitutional amendment campaign, John Russell, the 
Father of the Prohibition Party, a man of great ability, while 
engaged in a speaking tour over Ohio in the interest of the 
amendment, was excluded from speaking in a Congregational 
Church in Oberlin, in which he had been scheduled to speak on 
a week night, because of his prominent connection with the Party. 

In 1884, Walter Thomas Mills, then a student in Oberlin Col- 
lege, who later became the first organizer of the Intercollegiate 
Prohibition Association and the author of an excellent book en- 
titled, The Science of Politics, was mobbed for his activity in 
behalf of the Party. Oberlin was also a typical local no-license 
town of a type in which in that period it was notoriously difficult 
for the Party to obtain a foothold. Such was the anti-Prohibition 
party environment of the League’s birthplace. 

The starting of the Anti-Saloon League was not considered 
of much importance for some time because of the well-known 
history of the successive failures of several other similar non- 
partisan organizations which had started and fallen by the way- 
side during the preceding decade. 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 385 


PRECURSORS OF THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 


These earlier organizations, none of which had _ sufficient 
vitality or moral power to exist more than a few years, included: 

1. The Ohio Voters’ Union, organized in 1883, to unite 
temperance voters in a non-partisan manner to compel the sup- 
port of all political parties by throwing their vote solidly for any 
party pledged to their support. It existed only two years. Its 
president said they found “political ties and party bias too strong.”’ 

2. In 1884 a number of prominent persons, led by Dr. 
Dorchester and Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, started the National Non- 
Partisan League. After issuing some pamphlets attacking the 
Prohibition party it collapsed. 

3. In 1887 the Citizens’ Union of Michigan started out to 
reform the political caucus and convention and pledged its mem- 
bers to support as candidates for the Legislature only those men 
who were in favor of prohibition. Its president was the Repub- 
lican Lieutenant-Governor. Its purpose appeared to be largely 
to head off the Prohibition party. It likewise soon collapsed. 

4. In 1889 a small faction of the W.C.T.U., disgruntled be- 
cause of that organization’s friendliness toward the Prohibition 
party, seceded and formed the Non-Partisan W.C.T.U., but it 
never attained much strength. It was exceedingly bitter in its 
opposition to the Prohibition party. 

5. Ihe same year, in 1889, there started in Pennsylvania 


what was known as the Union Prohibitory League of Pennsyl- 


vania, headed by Dr. A. J. Kynett, who when the national Anti- 
Saloon League was formed in 1895, became chairman of the 
League’s board of directors. The animus of the Pennsylvania 
organization was shown in correspondence of Dr. Kynett who, in 
giving reasons for forwarding the League work, said, “in no other 
way can the present political tendency be modified,’ and another 
promoter of it said that unless the Union Prohibitory League was 
pushed, “the whole Prohibition movement would go into the 
hands of the third party.” 

6. Another somewhat similar organization, which for three or 
four years showed more activity than any of the above, was the 
Anti-Saloon Republican movement. It differed from the non- 
partisan organizations in that it sought to commit the Republican 
party to prohibition. For a while it had the support of a promi- 
nent newspaper organ, the New York Mail and Express, but it 
received little encouragement from the Republican leaders and 
failed. 


386 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


7. Another attempt was in Missouri, in 1890, when there was 
held an “‘All-Partisan” temperance convention, the first time when 
a name similar to omni-partisan was used. The prime mover in 
working up the convention was Howard H. Russell, then a 
minister in that state, who three years later at Oberlin came 
to be the founder of the Anti-Saloon League. Cherrington’s 
History of the Anti-Saloon League states that he found it difficult 
to raise money to work up the convention, so his difficulty becom- 
ing known to the Non-Partisan W.C.T.U. at Oberlin, that organi- 
zation furnished fifty dollars and made possible the holding of 
the All-Partisan Temperance Convention. 

8. In 1892 a non-partisan, anti-saloon organization was or- 
ganized in Massachusetts but was short-lived. 

It will be observed that most of the organizations mentioned 
above differed distinctly from the regular temperance organiza- 
tions like the splendid National Temperance Society, the temper- 
ance orders and others which were primarily educational and were 
non-political in the sense that as organizations they did not deal 
with the political phases of the question, or if they did they were 
not antagonistic to the Prohibition party idea. The leaders of 
most of the latter organizations were very friendly. 

Most of the organizations with which the Anti-Saloon League 
was related in its origins were distinctly hostile to the Prohibition 
party plan. 

This was further accentuated in the convention which organ- 
ized the national Anti-Saloon League in 1895. The list of those 
present shows that there were only one or two Prohibitionists of 
national prominence in attendance. The man chosen as national 
president of the Anti-Saloon League was Hiram Price, an ex- 
Congressman from Iowa and a Republican office-holder, a man 
who had been conspicuously persistent in his endeavors to head 
off the Prohibition party. He had been present at the special 
convention of 1882 and. had vigorously opposed the advanced 
party action taken there. Likewise in 1884, although then hold- 
ing office as a Republican federal Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 
he went to the Prohibition convention and did his best to prevent 
the nomination of a national ticket. 

So distasteful were his intrusions that the convention passed 
an ironical resolution introduced by John Lloyd Thomas: 


Resolved, That the convention of the Prohibition party recognizes 
with due humility the anxious care for the welfare of our party 
displayed by the representatives of the National Government, who 
in the persons of W. W. Dudley, Commissioner of Pensions, and 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 387 


Hon. Hiram Price, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, have violated 
Civil Service rules and used public time to come to Pittsburgh to 
urge advice upon members of the convention, but we timidly ad- 
vance the claim that the intelligence of this assembly is ample to 
provide for its own security. 


The Prohibition party never had a more persistent and inde- 
fatigable opponent among the temperance leaders than Hiram 
Price, who was chosen the first president of the National Anti- 
Saloon League and continued to hold that position as long as he 
lived. 

Thus the president and the chairman of the board of directors 
both had records conspicuously hostile to the Prohibition party. 

These facts regarding the forerunners and the personnel of 
the early officers of the League furnish apparent justification for 
the feeling on the part of many of the better informed Prohibi- 
tionists that the desire to protect the “Grand Old Party’’ and to 
head off the new was too great a factor in the founding of the 
League. It was thought that some strongly partisan Republicans 
were seeking a pillow for their consciences while they continued 
to vote for a license party. 

The object of the National Anti-Saloon League was stated to 
be the suppression of the saloon. To that end it invited the 
alliance of all those who were in harmony with that object. Its 
attitude toward the party method was distinctly stated in the 
paragraph setting forth the object. 

That paragraph said the League “pledges itself to avoid affilia- 
tions with any political party as such.” In later years some 
criticized the Prohibition party for not cooperating more thor- 
oughly with the League but in its very object the League took a 
position in direct opposition to the fundamental philosophy of 
the Prohibition party. 

The emphasis of the League was placed upon opposition to the 
saloon. The immediate objective in most states was local option 
as to the local saloon. For many years even the brewery and 
distillery were given little consideration. 


THE LEAGUE AND LOCAL OPTION IN OHIO 


The work of the League can best be illustrated by its history 
in the state of Ohio. That was its birthplace. By 1919 thirty- 
four of its state superintendents had come from that state. For 
years the successes won in Ohio were held up by its representa- 
tives in other states as evidence of what wonderful victories could 


388 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


be won by League methods. It was their exhibit “A” as to 
League accomplishments. 

Ohio was a state where for a generation there had been a 
strong and vigorous prohibition sentiment. In 1851 it had placed 
an anti-license clause in its state constitution. This was, how- 
ever, circumvented by the Legislature providing for a liquor tax 
instead of a license fee. 

In 1874 the liquor interests had tried to repeal the anti-license 
provision, but the people by a popular vote had voted to retain it. 
In 1883, ten years before the League was started, a state pro- 
hibition constitutional amendment had been submitted to the 
people and received a counted vote of 323,189 in its favor to 
240,975 opposed. But as the constitution required for its amend- 
ment a clear majority of all the votes cast at the election for any 
office, prohibition fell short of the required number to place it 
in the constitution. . 

Notwithstanding this sentiment, the League started in with 
local option, which to the Prohibitionist was a decided retro- 
gression. It was like a college graduate starting in all over again 
in the kindergarten. 

After thirteen years of agitation all the League had secured in 
its banner state was local option by a unit which did not cover a 
greater area than a municipality or township. In 1908, how- 
ever, a county option law was passed. 

In the next two and a half years under that law fifty-seven 
counties voted out the saloons, which, together with five already 
having no saloons, made sixty-two counties out of eighty-eight, 
where the people had outlawed the saloons. This appeared to be 
very encouraging progress. But in the second series of county 
option elections, held after the two years’ interval had elapsed, 
seventeen of the fifty-seven counties went wet again. 

Here was revealed the weakness of the Anti-Saloon League 
methods. The first election evidenced the sentiment of the people 
against the saloons. These were universally evil and the people 
wanted to banish them and voted against them when the question 
was submitted. The second election reflected the disappointment 
at the degree of banishment which had been achieved. There 
were several reasons why dry counties voted wet. One was the 
limited area of county option. Another reason was because the 
League in limiting its vision to the local saloon had not seen 
the breweries and the distilleries which not only furnished the 
source of supply but corrupted politics and also concentrated their 
national resources in local county elections. 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 389 


But probably the chief reason why dry counties went wet was 
because of the League’s ignoring of party government. The 
county had voted dry but the court house continued wet. In 
many cases the old type of political ring continued in office. 
These politicians were not in sympathy with the dry side and 
made no special efforts to enforce the law. 

The county was voted dry in one manner, by a direct vote of 
the people, but the officers were selected in another manner— 
by the political party. 

The political party nominated and elected the officers. Accord- 
ing to the Anti-Saloon League’s omni-partisan theory it was not 
necessary to have a party, its stress was laid upon good men 
regardless of party. Hence the League made no effort to secure 
a party alignment upon the dry issue. Each major party was 
composed of opposing elements on this question. Consequently 
the office-holder elected by the party organization held his office 
in part at least by the votes of those who did not want the law 
enforced. The office-holder knew that the organization which 
placed him in office was divided upon the question. He knew 
that if he were aggressive in doing his duty, he would alienate 
an active element of his party which was opposed to the law. 
He knew that he would be in danger of losing his office at the 
next election. On the other hand, by long experience the office- 
holders had found out that by a moderate pretense of enforce- 
ment they could probably hold that element of the party which 
was in favor of the law. Consequently in multitudes of cases 
in counties, states, and in the nation as a whole, a pretense of 
enforcement has been about all that was secured. As a result 
the holy cause of prohibition was brought into disrepute, due 
in its final analysis to the inherent weakness of the omni-partisan 
plan more than to any other single factor. 

That is undoubtedly the greatest reason why dry counties and 
states went wet. Throughout the history of prohibition the difh- 
culty has not been in getting prohibiting laws, but in getting them 
enforced. 

Returning to the history of the League’s work in Ohio, follow- 
ing the reaction on the second vote on county option, the State 
Constitutional Convention in 1912 removed the anti-license clause 
from the constitution and a license amendment was substituted. 
In 1914 on a statewide vote the wets succeeded in repealing the 
county option law and the number of counties having no saloons 
fell to only eighteen. 

It was the adoption of the statewide initiative and referendum 


390 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


in 1912 which forced the League to adopt the state as a unit. 
Votes on state prohibition were taken in 1914, 1915 and 1917 
with diminishing wet majorities each time and finally in 1918 a 
prohibitory law was secured. 

Such was the history of the League in its most lauded state. 
What had been proclaimed as wonderful local option victories 
turned out to be only temporary. 

Aside from the benefits of agitation and education, only small 
lasting benefits were achieved until after local option had been 
supplanted and national prohibition had become the overshadow- 
ing objective. 


THE OMNI-PARTISAN PLAN 


The Anti-Saloon League called itself omni-partisan and inter- 
denominational. There was a good deal of obscurity as to just 
what the term meant. As late as 1923 in a national conference 
the writer heard two high national officers of the League argue 
the question whether the League was omni-partisan or non- 
partisan. 

It was non-partisan in the sense that it was not partisan and 
did not affiliate directly with any party. But the term non- 
partisan has acquired to a large degree a technical meaning. A 
non-partisan movement is one such as is conducted when a meas- 
ure is submitted to a direct vote. 

Omni-partisan did not mean that it sought the support of all 
party organizations because in its very object the League pledged 
itself to avoid affiliation with any party as such. If it could not 
afhliate with any it could not with all. 

By the omni-partisan plan it was meant that the League sup- 
ported individual candidates of all parties or any, but did not 
seek the support of any party. The party to which a candidate 
belonged made no difference. The Anti-Saloon League Blue 
Book said: “The League has to do with candidates and the 
things they stand for instead of parties,’ and the Anti-Saloon 
League Catechism stated it was the aim to concentrate upon can- 
didates for office “irrespective of their party affiliations.” + 

In the Catechism, which was the Anti-Saloon League’s decla- 
ration of principles and methods, adopted in 1903, given in the 
form of questions and answers, one of the questions asked was, 
“May the League, at any time, be identified with any one politi- 


1The Church in Action Against the Saloon, an Authoritative Statement of the 
Movement Known as the Anti-Saloon League called the Blue Book, 1910 ed., 
p. 14. 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 391 


cal party, for the accomplishment of its purposes?” The answer 
was: “No. The League is under solemn promise not to form 
afhliations with any political party, nor to place in nomination a 
ticket of its own. Its plan is to make selections of the most 
acceptable available candidates placed in nomination by existing 
parties, and to invite persons in all the political parties to unite in 
securing their election.” 

The theory of the League was sometimes called the “good man 
theory”’ because it.urged people to vote for the “good man” can- 
didate no matter what his party. It assumed that so long as the 
individual candidate was a “good man” and personally more or 
less favorable to the particular temperance legislation sought 
by the League, the attitude of his party was of little or no 
importance. 

Meanwhile party government went right on. The major 
parties continued to be divided within themselves upon the pro- 
hibition question. Prohibition did not become a party principle. 
It was ignored by the parties. 

But the League upheld no high qualifications in supporting 
even so-called “good men.” In the Catechism one of the ques- 
tions was: “May the League properly favor the election of can- 
didates who are not wholly in faith and practice acceptable to 
friends of temperance reform?” The answer was: “While it is 
desirable that candidates for office should be in all respects ac- 
ceptable, it may be necessary at times, in order to secure some 
desired end, to vote for candidates committed to the object, 
though not wholly committed to the plan and purpose of the 
Deasie: 

Another question was “How shall the League choose between 
candidates partially acceptable?” The answer was: “It should 
choose the one committed to the most desirable measures and of 
whose election there is a reasonable probability.” 

In case of choice between a candidate partially acceptable and 
one who was unobjectionable but whose election was apparently 
improbable, the choice was the “‘partially acceptable’ candidate.? 

This led to many exceedingly strange situations. For ex- 
ample, in 1908 in Illinois the League endorsed thirty-four can- 
didates for the Legislature who were also endorsed by the liquor 
organizations. That the liquor side knew their men better than 
did the Anti-Saloon League was proven by the fact that although, 
following the election, the League claimed a victory, when the 
Legislature met no desired legislation was obtained. 


2 Catechism, Question 14. 


392 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


This League policy led to the support of all kinds of ques- 
tionable candidates and helped to perpetuate the old type of poli- 
ticians. It tended to repress high ideals in politics. It was very 
discouraging to a candidate striving for purer politics to have the 
church vote, so far as influenced by the League, go to an opposing 
candidate who was but “partially acceptable.” 

Another evidence of the League’s satisfaction with the old 
parties was shown by question nineteen of the Catechism. It 
asked: “Does the League seek the disintegration of any political 
party?” The answer was: “It certainly does not. It never seeks 
to induce any voter to forsake the party of his choice, nor to 
vote a party ticket other than that with which he has been con- 
nected. While it makes selections of most desirable and avail- 
able candidates in all parties and aims to unite in their election 
adherents of the several political parties, it avoids all efforts that 
would tend to destroy party integrity or effect the overthrow of 
any political organization.” 

This, again, was in direct opposition to the purpose of the 
Prohibition party which sought to overthrow both the liquor- 
dominated old parties with their shameful subserviency to the 
liquor power, their organic incapacity to settle this question and 
their perversion of the high purposes of government. 

There was an irreconcilable difference, a great gulf between 
the low ideals of satisfaction with the rum-ridden old parties 
and perpetuation in office of low grade politicians on the one 
hand, and on the other the ideals of the Prohibition party which 
sought a regeneration of politics and statesmen to match the 
grandeur of the cause. 

The lack of idealism in politics was all the more deplorable 
because the League claimed to represent the church in action. 

The League had started in 1893 as a “self-perpetuating, vol- 
untary organization” working chiefly through the churches but 
it was not until 1904 that, beginning in Illinois, the state branches 
began to officially represent the churches by virtue of the state 
bodies of the different denominations appointing members of the 
state boards of trustees of the League.* The League usually saw 
to it that only their strongest supporters were appointed so that 
it was exceedingly seldom that the churches were able to control 
the League to the extent of removing a superintendent. Not all 
the denominations were represented. The Presbyterian Church 
was precluded by reason of a provision in its fundamental law 
preventing official connection with non-ecclesiastical bodies and its 

3 The Church in Action, p. 60. 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 393 


General Assembly repeatedly refused to take steps toward author- 
izing official connection. 

One effect of the League’s work was to cause a reaction in the 
high standard taken by the church as expressed in the church 
_ declarations described in Chapter XV. This reaction was most 
noticeable in the Methodist Church where the League obtained 
its greatest influence. As quoted in the chapter referred to, that 
denomination in 1888 and 1892 had taken very advanced ground 
with regard both to prohibition and to political parties. But 
by 1908, under the influence of the League, the resolutions had 
been toned down to individual candidates instead of parties and 
substantially to the advocacy of local option, with prohibition held 
out as a hazy prospect in the indefinite future. The Methodist 
resolutions of 1908 repeated the familiar League phrases about 
putting the liquor traffic “in the course of ultimate extinction” 
and about local option as a “‘step.”” They were in decided con- 
trast to the earlier militant declarations. 

Among the reasons why the League was unacceptable to the 
more advanced Prohibitionists were: : 

1. Its advocacy of omni-partisanism, the effects of which are 
hereinafter discussed. 

2. Its concentration upon local option, an entirely inadequate 
solution for an overwhelmingly national problem. In the Anti- 
Saloon League Year Books of 1908 and I9QIO three times the 
space is given to a discussion of local option as a method as 
that given to prohibition. Not until 1913 did local option cease 
to be the chief method promoted by the League. 

3. Its lowering of the standard of the churches to conform 
with the low basis of current political conduct rather than up- 
holding high ideals of righteousness in government. 

4. Its obsession regarding the “step” theory of local option 
with the result that in a number of states it obstructed the secur- 
ing of prohibition. In North Carolina it opposed the state 
prohibition campaign until practically forced into it by Governor 
Glenn. 

In Georgia the League came out for state prohibition only a 
short time before it was adopted in 1907 and as the result of 
the fact that men on the Resolutions Committee who had long 
been affiliated with the Prohibition party insisted that it should 
declare for state prohibition. 

In Arizona it opposed the statewide campaign in 1914 which 
proved to be successful. 

In South Dakota it had consented to the dispensary and in 


394 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Iowa, in 1902, it had favored the maintenance of the infamous 
Mulct Law. 

Its policy up to 1913 was almost continually that of opportu- 
nism. It frequently retarded rather than led public sentiment. 

5. Its numerous compromises alienated many who were 
supporters of prohibition by reason of principle. Even after 
1913 it supported gallon and quart laws which permitted 
liquor in certain quantities to be shipped into prohibition terri- 
tory for personal use. The League supported such laws in Vir- 
ginia, Oregon, Washington, and other states. In California 
as late as 1917 it supported the Rominger bill which permitted 
the sale of wine up to 21 per cent of alcohol. 

6. It incorporated “for sale” clauses in the proposed amend- 
ment to the Federal Constitution, known as the Hobson Amend- 
ment, which it caused to be introduced in Congress in 1913. 
These clauses made the prohibition apply only to the manufacture 
for sale, transportation for sale, importation for sale, and ex- 
portation for sale. If these clauses had been adopted they would 
have made prohibition of little effect. 

One of the reasons for a constitutional amendment was to 
confer upon the federal government the direct, unquestionable 
power to prohibit. If the Hobson Amendment had been adopted 
it would have limited the federal prohibitory power to merely 
that of prohibiting the manufacture for sale, the transportation 
for sale, and so forth. It would not have provided for the pro- 
hibition of manufacture or transportation for personal use and 
would have been almost unenforceable. 

7. It opposed the Reed Amendment which prohibited the inter- 
state transportation of beverage liquors into any state or territory 
the laws of which prohibited the manufacture or sale of intoxi- 
cating liquor. When this measure was pending in Congress in 
1917, the chairman of the League’s National Legislative Com- 
mittee, Dr. Cannon, sought to prevent its passage. He personally 
lobbied against it. It passed despite his opposition. 

The effect of the Reed Amendment was to prevent the bringing 
into so-called dry territory of liquor in quantities for personal 
use, this having been permitted in several states by the compro- 
mising prohibitory laws which had been drafted by the League. 

8. Its halting, temporizing attitude on War Prohibition was 
not creditable at a time when an unprecedented patriotism was 
voicing its demand for the overcoming of the worst enemy any 
nation had. 

g. The League’s continual policy of opportunism, its almost 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 395 


habitual compromising, its repeated political machinations even 
against other prohibition organizations, caused it to incur the 
disapprobation of many of the better informed and more advanced 
temperance people of the country. The other anti-liquor organiza- 
tions cooperated with each other, but it was exceedingly difficult 
for them to cooperate with the League except upon the basis of 
subserviency to the League. 

10. The League had a comparatively superficial grasp of the 
larger aspects of the problem. There was comparatively little 
scholarship in its propaganda except perhaps on the physiological 
side of the problem, where in the later period material was fur- 
nished chiefly by the Scientific Temperance Federation which had 
its origin in the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction 
of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. For intellectual 
content the files of its organs do not compare with the files of the 
Prohibition papers with their many able articles. 

11, There were other irritations caused by the League, such 
as its attempted blocking or circumventing of the more aggressive 
church temperance boards; its attempts in a dozen or more states 
to close the churches to prohibition speakers of other prohibition 
organizations; its excessive and exaggerated claims for credit for 
the progress of prohibition; its misleading wet and dry maps; its 
meager experience of sacrifice as compared with the Prohibition- 
ists; its almost universal failure to support Prohibition party 
candidates, even those who had already demonstrated their pos- 
sibility of election—notably its failure to support Congressman 
Randall of California for reelection notwithstanding his un- 
surpassed record in Congress, and also State Senator Lobeck in 
Minnesota, a splendid, able Prohibition leader of the Northwest. 

These objectionable actions and characteristics of the League, 
however, were minor as compared with the fundamental conflict 
between the partisan and omni-partisan plans. The omni-parti- 
san plan has thus far prevailed. It has now been tested. 

As has always been claimed by the Prohibitionists, it has now 
been demonstrated to have serious inherent defects which or- 
ganically affect the success and progress of prohibition and which 
demand analysis. 


CONSEQUENCES OF THE OMNI-PARTISAN PLAN 


1. The omni-partisan plan prevented a continuous political 
union of the voters who were in favor of prohibition. By keeping 
them divided among all parties it prevented a union in one. It 
kept the dry Republicans in the Republican party and the dry 


396 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Democrats in the Democratic party and was unable to control 
either party as a party. 

2. Such union as was achieved was only temporary. Whena 
state referendum campaign was on the dry voters were gotten 
to the polls in mass. But they voted on the specially submitted 
question of prohibition, cast their ballot for it in the referendum 
and that ended their union. The voters separated when it came to 
the election of officers to execute the law. Similarly, the occas- 
ional crossing of party lines to elect dry candidates was temporary 
and exceptional. The customary attitude was adhesion to one’s 
accustomed party. 

3. The temporary joining to carry a referendum provided for 
the adoption of a policy but not for the continuous union to carry 
it into effect. It did not provide for the continuous administrative 
support to execute it. 

4. Under the omni-partisan plan one group of voters adopted 
the policy, that is, the group which voted for the prohibition law 
under the referendum. But another group administered the law, 
that is, the group which composed the political party in power 
and elected the officers. The majority which adopted the law was 
differently composed from the majority which elected the off- 
cers. But the group which elected the officers was organized and 
continuous and the group which voted for the law was not. 

5. No matter how much the Anti-Saloon League tried to get 
around the fact of party government, its attempt at such circum- 
vention did not do away with the fact. The ostrich by hiding its 
head in the sand cannot obliterate the fact that his enemies are 
approaching. The fact is that the parties nominate and elect 
the candidates and the successful party administers the gov- 
ernment. 

6. Neither major party was united in the support of prohibi- 
tion. Neither adopted prohibition as a party principle. The 
League continuously opposed the proposal that either party should 
support prohibition. Even in 1920 after prohibition was in the 
Constitution, but was being viciously attacked by opposing inter- 
ests, the chairman of the Legislative Committee of the League, 
Bishop Cannon, appeared before the Resolutions Committee of 
the Democratic National Convention opposing a proposed plank 
upholding prohibition. He did it even in opposition to William 
J. Bryan, three times Democratic candidate for President and in 
later years the most prominent dry leader of that party. He did 
the same thing at the Democratic National Convention of 1924 
in Opposition to more than twenty-five other prohibition organi- 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 397 


zations which were seeking a plank in favor of the maintenance 
and enforcement of prohibition. 

7. By giving its influence to the perpetuation of the old 
parties, by “avoiding all efforts that would tend to destroy party 
integrity or effect the overthrow of any political organization,” 
the League helped to keep alive the old alignments and helped to 
make other issues paramount, issues frequently manufactured or 
exaggerated and usually infinitesimal as compared to prohibition. 
The League thus minimized its own issue and encouraged its 
subordination. 

8. Party alignments continued along the old cleavages. 
Each party contained two opposing and conflicting elements, the 
wets and the drys. But both elements were party supporters. 
Both were an integral part of the party. The wettest liquorite 
was just as good a Republican or a Democrat, as the case might 
be, as an Anti-Saloon League bishop. It was the party policy 
to hold both of these elements if possible and alienate neither. 

9g. The liquor vote was more easily alienated. It was less 
bound by party ties, would leave on less provocation. It was more 
easily controlled, was more bossible, could be more easily shifted 
from one party to another. It was harder to conciliate and could 
only be conciliated by compromise either in legislation or en- 
forcement. It exacted obedience by its threat of wielding its 
balance of power. It frequently disciplined and defeated can- 
didates. Its alienation was, therefore, more feared than that of 
the temperance vote. 

10. The liquor traffic was able to wield the balance of power, 
to occupy the center of the political teeter-board, simply because 
the good citizens continued to be divided between the two old 
parties, the very division fostered by the omni-partisan plan. 

The advocates of the omni-partisan plan unwittingly helped to 
forward the plan of the liquor men which, according to one of 
the liquor organs, was to “keep both parties in the field, divide 
the spoils of office between them, prevent the hopeless defeat of 
either.” 

11. Even -under constitutional prohibition the liquor traffic 
continued to take advantage of the division between the two 
parties on extraneous issues and threatened to wield the balance 
of power. 

Some have thought that this threat of the use of the balance 
of power has lost its influence. Locally in the dryer sections 
and in the one-party states it has done so to some degree. But 
in the nation as a whole the liquor element continued in the year 


398 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


1924 to elicit the silence if not the obedience of the politicians 
because of its threat to wield the balance of power in carrying the 
presidential electoral vote in certain close, pivotal states. The 
opponents of prohibition took advantage of the continued division 
along other issues and the closeness of presidential elections. 

In March, 1924, the Joint Legislative Committee for the 
Modification of the Volstead Act, which claimed to represent the 
American Federation of Labor and three wet organizations, hav- 
ing as chairman the First Vice-President of the American Fed- 
eration of Labor, sent out publicity matter in which it claimed to 
be speaking for 7,000,000 voters. This was undoubtedly greatly 
exaggerated. But the wet threat of wielding the balance of 
power affected the politicians and rendered parties silent if not 
subservient. : 

Over four years after the Eighteenth Amendment had gone 
into effect as a part of the Constitution both parties continued to 
be afraid to alienate wet votes because they feared to lose the 
margin of plurality in certain close, pivotal states which contained 
a considerable wet vote, among these states. being New York, 
New Jersey and Maryland. 

One illustration of the continued domination of the liquor 
power over the old parties was a conversation which the writer 
had in February, 1924, with a personally dry Congressman from 
the pioneer prohibition state of Kansas. Kansas is a state in 
which locally the liquor traffic had as little political influence as 
in any state in the country, a state where the benefits of prohibi- 
tion were so universally recognized that the people were almost 
unanimous in its favor. Yet notwithstanding this, the Kansas 
Congressman was opposed to his party adopting a plank in favor 
of the maintenance and enforcement of prohibition for fear it 
would alienate votes in certain close, pivotal states of the East. 

In an earlier chapter it was stated that Kansas delegates to 
the Republican national convention of 1888 had refused to advo- 
cate a prohibition plank. Likewise in 1920 enthusiasm for com- 
mitting the national party was lacking, and the same attitude con- 
tinued in 1924. 

This illustrates how the liquor traffic continued to wield its 
power and how both of the old parties in their desire to retain a 
component part of their membership continued to be dominated 
by the wets. 

If the same overwhelming prohibition sentiment which out- 
lawed the saloon in most of the states and which placed prohibi- 
tion in the Constitution had been united in a political party the 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 399 


wets would not now be able to take advantage of old partisan 
divisions to wield the balance of power. The present deplorable 
situation is thus a direct consequence of the omni-partisan method. 

12. As a result of the dual composition of each party and 
the continued incentive to hold the liquor vote in national 
elections, neither party was committed to the maintenance and 
enforcement of prohibition. It did not become a party principle. 

Even though prohibition is in the Constitution, such is the 
influence of the party interest that politicians place the party 
ahead of a great moral’ principle in the Constitution, 

13. Not being a party principle, neither party accepted re- 
sponsibility for the earnest. enforcement of prohibition. The 
kind of prohibition which the United States has thus far ex- 
perienced has been prohibition without a responsible party behind 
it to administer it. 

One of thé main reasons for lack of party responsibility for 
prohibition was because the Anti-Saloon League followed the 
policy of trying to get around the fact of party government. One 
of the reasons why the League gained as many so-called victories 
as it did, was because it seldom called upon a legislature to take a 
direct responsibility for the inauguration of a dry policy. Usually 
it merely asked the legislature for a local option law which shifted 
the responsibility away from the legislature to a locality, local 
option permitting a locality to decide for or against the saloon; 
or, later, it asked for the submission of a state amendment which 
also shifted the responsibility for the decision from the represen- 
tatives in the legislature to the people of the state. 

Even the submission of a federal constitutional amendment 
shifted the responsibility for the time being from Congress to the 
state legislatures. Some of the Anti-Saloon League leaders made 
the unsound argument that Congressmen should forego their own 
views and submit the question to the states and let the states de- 
cide the question of amending the Constitution. There is no 
evidence, however, that many Congressmen were influenced by 
that kind of argument. 

Although the responsibility could be shifted when it concerned 
a single decision, such as is involved in voting for or against a 
particular proposal, responsibility can not be shifted when it 
concerns the continuous enforcement of the law. Here the party 
in power has the responsibility and upon the question whether 
or not the party seriously fulfils that responsibility depends 
whether or not the law is effectively enforced. The fact that 
there has been no real party responsibility for prohibition by the 


400 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


party in power is the main reason why prohibition has not been 
better enforced. 

The reason for ineffective enforcement traces back to the 
unsound governmental theory underlying the omni-partisan plan. 

14. Another effect of perpetuating the old alignments was 
that the office-holder had a divided constituency, some wets, some 
drys. If an administration offended the drys by a lax enforce- 
ment of the law it has been found by long experience that the dry 
voters, although they sometimes protested, usually stayed with the 
party. On the other hand, if the wet voters became offended they 
frequently bolted to the opposite party. The ordinary office- 
holder usually took the middle ground and made a pretense of 
enforcement sufficient to satisfy the drys and at the same time 
catered to the wets by interfering with them no more than neces- 
sary to maintain the pretense. In many cases, however, the office- 
holders did not respect the law even to the extent of making a 
pretense of enforcement. For effective enforcement a united 
constituency for the administrator is essential. The omni-partisan 
plan usually furnished a divided one. 

15. The continuation of the national party incentive to hold 
the wet vote so affected the party objective and created such a 
subserviency to the wet vote as to neutralize efforts to reform the 
old parties from within. Direct primaries failed to reform either. 
old party to any great degree because the national party ob jective 
continued to be to retain the wet vote. The primaries might 
change the personnel within the organization but did not greatly 
affect the objective of the party. The national objective of a 
party in presidential elections is the chief factor in determining 
the policy and character of a party. 

16. One of the most deplorable consequences of the omni- 
partisan plan was that it resulted in the perpetuation in a large 
measure of the old type of degraded politics. A great moral 
principle was implanted in the Constitution, but there was but 
little betterment in the quality of our politics because, as indicated 
above, the opposition was left in control of the party organiza- 
tions. In most states the same old political bosses continued in 
power. The old low political standards continued to prevail. 
The political machinery continued to be in the hands of the 
ordinary old type of wet or “two-faced’’ politicians. 

The omni-partisan plan left most of the political power in the 
control of the old political organizations which were responsible 
for the colossal infamies of the old liquor political system. 

This situation was in sickening contrast to the purpose and 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 401 


ideals of the Prohibitionists who sought a party of commanding 
principle, a party of a united constituency, a party which would 
stand four-square for political righteousness, a party which would 
root out the old pro-liquor régime and install in office men en- 
nobled by the very cause they champion. 

Of course, the personnel of politics was improved to some de- 
gree as the result of outlawing the saloon. Such improvement 
as occurred, however, was chiefly in legislative bodies, rather 
than in executive officers, as most of the concentration upon so- 
called “good men” was to secure legislation rather than adminis- 
tration. Also the improvement was better in the one-party states 
where dry candidates, after winning in the primaries, stood a bet- 
ter prospect of winning in the ensuing election because in the 
one-party states the wets were not able to control the balance 
of power. 

But taking the country as a whole, a tour of over five hun- 
dred cities in forty-five states in nation-wide prohibition and law 
enforcement campaigns in the six years since the preparation of 
this history was begun has impressed the writer that local adminis- 
trative officers continue to be largely of the same type of poli- 
ticians as before. The omni-partisan derogation of a party for 
prohibition resulted in the dominant parties remaining unpuri- 
fed. The great principle of prohibition was entrusted not to its 
friends, but often to its enemies—to officials who owed their 
political careers to the liquor-political alliances, In fully two- 
thirds of the cities visited throughout the country some of the 
essential, strategic official positions relating to law enforcement 
were filled by wets. Including such officers as mayor, chief of 
police, sheriff, prosecuting attorney and judges, all of whom 
are vital in law enforcement, it was only occasionally that a large 
community was found where all these officers were dry. Where 
the officers were dry, it was generally due to there having been 
a union of the better citizens—substantially a local party align- 
ment to elect officials who would enforce the law. 

17. Still worse, this continued dominance of the old régime in 
politics had its debasing effects in the presidential campaign of 
1920 and in the national administration which followed. 

Both major parties nominated for President candidates who 
were decidedly unsatisfactory both from the standpoint of favor- 
ableness to the new principle of the Constitution and from the 
standpoint of general capacity and statesmanship. 

Mr. Harding, the successful candidate, when in the Senate had 
voted for the submission of the Eighteenth Amendment and the 


402 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


passage of the Volstead Law over President Wilson’s veto but on 
nearly every other dry measure he had voted with the wets. An 
investigation of his votes as recorded in the Congressional Record 
made by an organization in Washington, D. C., whose chief 
function is to report the records of members of Congress, showed 
that out of thirty-two roll calls on wet and dry measures during 
his term in the Senate, he had voted with the wets thirty of the 
thirty-two times. Some of the roll calls were on unimportant mat- 
ters, but a score of them were important and revealed his anti- 
prohibition attitude.* 

When the proposed Eighteenth Amendment was pending in 
the Senate, on August 1, 1917, he made a speech in which he 
said: “I am not a prohibitionist, Mr. President, and never pre- 
tended to be. . . . I do not approach this question from a moral 
viewpoint, because I am unable to see it as a great moral ques- 
tion.” ° He offered an amendment to the proposed amendment, 
which provided that it should be inoperative unless ratified within 
six years from the date of submission. This was later changed 
to seven years. He went on to say that he would not vote for sub- 
mission unless this limitation should be adopted and if this were 
added he would then vote for submission in the endeavor to “get 
the question out of politics.” 

This proposed six-year limitation which he sponsored and 
insisted upon was the scheme devised by the liquor interests 
for the purpose of heading off prohibition. 

He announced in the Senate that if the prohibition amend- 
ment should be adopted he would be willing to join in a movement 
for compensation to the liquor interests. He also admitted hav- 
ing owned some stock in a local brewery in his home city, hav- 
ing made no moral distinction between owning stock in a brewery 
and owning stock in legitimate business enterprises. 

During the campaign of 1920 the Prohibitionists pointed out 
that there were three strategic offices relating to the enforcement 
of the Eighteenth Amendment which, if the incoming President 
should fill by the appointment of wet officials, any one of those 
officials could prevent effective enforcement. These offices were 
those of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney-General 
and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. All of these offices 
were filled by men generally regarded as wet. 

The Secretary of the Treasury, the head of the department of 


which the Prohibition Unit was a mere fraction, had been 
4 The Oficial Truth About Harding, by Lynn Haines and H. R. Mussey, p. 10. 
5 Congressional Record, Aug. 1, 1917, p. 5648. 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 403 


heavily interested financially in the making of whisky. In March, 
1924, a United States Senator from his home city, Senator Reed 
of Pittsburgh, who had been his personal attorney, stated on 
the floor of the Senate: 


For many years past ... there has been a partnership known 
as A. Overholt and Co., which was in the business of distilling 
whisky in western Pennsylvania. For a great many years—I do 
not know how many, but I think forty years—Mr. A. W. Mellon 
was one of the partners in that partnership. . . . Before he took 
the oath of office he transferred his whole interest in that enterprise 
to the Union Trust Co. of Pittsburgh as trustees to close up the 
business absolutely. ... He will when the business is finally 
liquidated be entitled to his proportion of the net proceeds.* 


In 1925 the newspapers reported that the Overholt distillery 
had been sold, that the amount of whisky involved was about 
1,800,000 gallons and that Mr. Mellon had held a one-third 
interest." In other words the whisky distillery interest of the man 
at the head of the department responsible for the enforcement 
of the Eighteenth Amendment was amazingly large. 

Furthermore, so far as known to the temperance and prohibi- 
tion leaders or to the genenal public, there was no indication either 
through personal expression or administrative policy that his at- 
titude toward prohibition was different from that which naturally 
would be inferred regarding one so long heavily interested in the 
making of whisky. 

And yet the people wondered why the great moral principle of 
the Constitution was not better enforced. Even if the Secretary 
of the Treasury never lifted a finger to encourage the wet side, 
the law violators, big and little, thought they had a friend at the 
most strategic center of power and that the government did not 
really mean to enforce prohibition. 

An administration which would appoint and maintain such a 
man in such a position, in the face of an unprecedented attempt to 
nullify the Constitution and create disrespect for its newly adopted 
moral principle, should have been sunk in political oblivion by a 
moral uprising of the American people. 

In addition, the Attorney-General, although professing to be 
dry according to certain standards, was generally regarded as a 
representative of the old type of questionable politics. The day 
after President Coolidge asked for his resignation, for reasons 
extraneous to prohibition, the New York Herald Tribune, the 


6 See Congressional Record, March 31, 1924, pp. 5244 and 5245. 
7 New York Times, May 26, 10925. 


404 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


leading Republican paper of the East, on March 29, 1924, re- 
ferred to him as “far better versed in the technique of saloon 
politics than in the case books.” 

The Commissioner of Internal Revenue evidenced no convic- 
tion in favor of the law and conducted his office so unsatisfac- 
torily that he was repeatedly the object of vigorous criticism by 
the friends of law enforcement. 

Thus every one of the three key officials was glaringly unfit 
to administer the prohibitory laws. ‘The attitude of these men at 
the top lowered the morale of enforcement officers from top to 
bottom all over the country. It encouraged the violation of the 
Constitution, by making the violators think that no serious effort 
would be made to enforce the law. It helped the propaganda of 
the wets by holding out the hope of nullification. It fostered 
their cry that prohibition was a failure. It augmented disrespect 
for law and engendered distrust of national prohibition in the 
minds of the undiscriminating. 

Furthermore, the federal prohibition enforcement officers 
were appointed through the usual party channels for the distribu- 
tion of party patronage. The party policy was not dry and many 
of the patronage distributing politicians were decidedly wet. 
Many had been long in political alliance with the liquor interests, 
many had secured their offices by seeking the support of those 
who wanted the prohibition law violated. The consequence was 
that many officers who were appointed to enforce the prohibition 
law were decidedly wet and antagonistic to the very law they 
were paid to enforce. In seventeen states visited by the writer, 
the chief federal prohibition officer appointed in each of those 
states was reputed to be wet. Could the depths of governmental 
degradation be more abysmal? 

Such was the outcome of omni-partisanism. The record of en- 
forcement by a government controlled by the old type of liquor- 
subservient politics was one of duplicity and maladministra- 
tion. This kind of enforcement threatened to bring the noble 
cause of prohibition into disrepute and even engendered doubt as 
to the capacity of the nation to achieve a great moral advance. 

The consequences of the omni-partisan plan which sought to 
implant a great moral principle in the Constitution and at the 
same time leave that principle to be administered by the unre- 
generate old parties have demonstrated the colossal inadequacy 
of that plan. By contrast they have emblazoned the overwhelm- 
ing need of the Prohibitionists’ plan of a party committed to 
prohibition to administer it from the standpoint of party principle. 


PROHIBITION PARTY AND ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE 405 


SELECT REFERENCES 


Among the scores of articles dealing with the omni-partisan 
method appearing in the Prohibition papers the following were 
among the best: 

Method and Principle, editorial in New Voice, October 17, 1901. 

The Reform’s Wider Purposes. Editorial in National Prohibj- 
tionist, July 16, 1908. 

CALDERWOOD, W. G.—Not Good Men but Good Party, National 
Prohibitionist, July 16, 1908. 

PaTTon, Rosert H.—Reply to Anti-Saloon League attack upon 
the Prohibition Party. National Prohibitionist, Septem- 
ber 24, 1908. 

FErcuson, Wittiam P. F.—When the Tide Comes in. Ad- 
dress, National Prohibitionist, July 28, IQIO, 

Newett, J. P.—The Party Victorious, American ‘Advance, 
June 10, Iort. 

Fercuson, Witiiam P, F.—Bring Up the Regiment, Vindica- 
tor, October 21, 1913. 

SHIELDS, Joon A.—The “Good Man” Theory, Vindicator, 
November 20, 1914. 

HENDRICKson, FINLEY C.—The Logic of Partisanism, Vindica- 
tor, February 5, 1915. 

SHIELDS, Joun A.—A Discussion of Methods, American Pro- 
hibition Year Book, rors, p. 118. 


The leading books which give the distinctively Anti-Saloon 
League viewpoint are: 
CHERRINGTON, E. H.—The Anti-Saloon League Year Book, 
annually, 1908 to date. 
CHERRINGTON, E. H.—The History of the Anti-Saloon Weague, 
POLS spi GI: 
CHERRINGTON, E, H.—The Evolution of Prohibition in. the 
United States of America, 1920, 384 pp. 
Barker, JoHN M.—The Saloon Problem and Social Reform, 
1905, 212 pp. 
Proceedings of the National Conventions of the Anti-Saloon 
League have been issued after the national conventions 
Which in later years have been held biennially, 
ANDERSON, Witt1AM H.—The Church in Action Against the 
Saloon. An Authoritative Statement of the Movement, 
1906, rev. ed. 1910, booklet, 64 pp. 
The leading organ of the A. S. L. is the American Issue. 


Chapter XXII 
EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 


One of the most ambitious programs undertaken by the Pro- 
hibition party for a number of years was adopted at a national 
conference held at Indianapolis in January, 1913. This program, 
known as the Indianapolis Program, provided for five specific 
lines of work: 

1. To raise one million dollars for party work before the 
close of the campaign of I916. 

2. To organize Prohibition clubs everywhere. 

3. To tremendously increase the circulation of Prohibition 
periodicals. 

4. To concentrate in not to exceed ten Congressional districts 
for the purpose of electing Prohibitionists to Congress in the 
fall of 1914. 

5. To enroll five million voters for the support of the Prohi- 
bition party. 

By June, 1914, the National Committee under the leadership 
of Virgil G. Hinshaw completed the raising of the first unit of 
a quarter of a million dollars, by far the largest amount ever 
raised in a similar period, and the various state committees had 
raised about an equal sum. 

Concentration campaigns were conducted in 1914 in Arizona 
where Eugene W. Chafin as candidate for United States Senator 
made a vigorous campaign, finishing second in the race; in the 
Second Congressional district of Oregon where George L. 
Cleaver ran a close second, polling more than one-third of the 
votes with three candidates in the field; in the Twenty-eighth 
Congressional district of Pennsylvania where William P. F. 
Ferguson made a splendid campaign in a difficult district, polling 
about 5,000 votes, a little less than 8,000 votes being necessary 
to elect; and in the Ninth district of California where Charles 
HH. Randall was elected to Congress. 

The aggressive work of the Party in Oregon deserves spe- 
cial mention. For a number of years there had been a splendid 
group of active men in that state led by I. H. Amos, B. Lee 
Paget, F. McKercher and others who had dedicated themselves 
to the advancement of the cause by every means in their power. 

406 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 407 


It had been chiefly due to the activities of the Prohibition party 
leaders that under the initiative and referendum a county option 
law had been secured in 1904 under which two-thirds of the 
counties had voted out the saloons. There as elsewhere, how- 
ever, attempts at a local solution proved inadequate. 

Because of wet officers administering dry laws some of the 
voters became alienated and in 1910 a home rule amendment was 
adopted which permitted saloons to return to the cities of 
Oregon. Following this the Party leaders determined to make 
still greater efforts to build a party to both secure and administer 
the law. 

In 1912, there was conducted an “Out to Win” campaign under 
the leadership of State Chairman J. P. Newell, a man of remark- 
ably clear vision, and State Secretary E. E. Taylor, who had 
received his training in the Intercollegiate Prohibition Associa- 
tion and in organizing activities in several states. B. Lee Paget, 
candidate for United States Senator, spoke more than two hun- 
dred and fifty times over the state. | 

An extensive literature campaign was carried on. During the 
last six months of the campaign about one thousand volunteer 
workers distributed over half a million pieces of literature. 

The Party organization was greatly strengthened, twenty of the 
thirty-four counties having been organized. In six counties 
where special efforts were made to elect men to the Legislature 
more than 25 per cent of the total vote was polled, and W. P. 
Elmore lacked only fourteen votes of being elected. Several 
county and local officers were elected. 

The “Out to Win” campaign was kept up and in 1914 the 
number of registered Prohibitionists in the state was eight times 
what it had been in 1912. In the concentration campaign for 
Congressman in the Second district George L. Cleaver received 
33 per cent of the total vote and in the First district, where 
Curtis P. Coe was the candidate, the percentage was doubled over 
1912. W. P. Elmore, a member of the State Committee, was 
elected to the Legislature and six other legislative candidates and 
two candidates for sheriff came very close to election. 

B. Lee Paget as candidate for State Treasurer polled 70,000 
votes. Furthermore, the party Prohibitionists with the coopera- 
tion of the W. C. T. U. inaugurated the movement which led to 
the adoption of state constitutional prohibition under the initiative 
and referendum that year. The long continued education of the 
Prohibition party was a very large factor in securing the majority 
for state prohibition. 


408 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


An unfortunate sequel to the adoption of the constitutional 
amendment was, that when it came to the enactment of enforcing 
legislation to carry the constitutional provision into effect, those 
who dominated the drafting of the legislation were anti-saloon- 
ists rather than prohibitionists. As in several other so-called 
prohibition states of that period, including Washington and sev- 
eral of the southern states, the enforcing legislation, although 
aiming to eliminate the saloon, permitted the importation of con- 
siderable quantities for personal use. The Oregon enforcement 
law permitted the importation of two quarts of spirituous or 
vinous liquors or twenty-four quarts of malt liquors every four 
weeks. Notwithstanding the amendment had been initiated by 
the Prohibition State Committee and the W. C. T. U., with the 
Anti-Saloon League coming in at the eleventh hour under pro- 
test, the enforcing legislation provided merely an anti-saloon 
law. 

The importation became so extensive that in Portland and 
other cities special express offices were opened to handle the 
liquor trade. Conditions were becoming intolerable and the 
brewery interests initiated a measure to permit the manufacture 
of beer within the state to be voted upon in a referendum at the 
1916 election. Inasmuch as so much liquor was allowed to be 
shipped in, the brewers were making menacing progress in their 
campaign. It was becoming a matter of great concern to the 
temperance people and consideration was given to the matter of 
initiating a counter-measure to forbid importation. All tem- 
perance organizations had this matter under advisement, but both 
the Anti-Saloon League and the W. C. T. U. decided not to 
undertake it. The Prohibition Party State Committee stepped 
into the breach and initiated a measure for complete prohibition 
which would prohibit the importation and carried for some time 
the entire burden of expense of getting signatures to the initia- 
tive petition and carrying on the campaign. Meanwhile it sought 
to organize a Union Dry Committee and invited, even after its 
refusal to cooperate, the Anti-Saloon League to unite. The 
W. C. T. U. decided to unite but the Anti- ‘Saloon League held 
to its refusal. The latter prosecuted its campaign against the 
brewers’ proposal but for the most part ignored the anti- -impor- 
tation measure. When this measure succeeded at the election it 
characteristically took the credit.* The adoption of this law under 
the referendum in Oregon in 1916 was an outstanding event in 


1 See Patriot Phalanx, March 23, 1917. Article by Mrs, Unruh, former presi- 
dent of the Oregon WCE Ue 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 409 


the progress of prohibition. This law was called a “bone-dry”’ 
law because it prohibited the shipping of liquor into the state for 
personal use. The term “bone-dry” was first used in this cam- 
paign in Oregon in 1916, 

In 1914 in several other sections of the country special efforts 
were made. In New York former Governor Sulzer was the 
Prohibition nominee and polled 126,270 votes, he having re- 
ceived also the nomination of the American party which was 
responsible for perhaps a little over half of the vote. One 
bright spot in a dark state was Gloucester county, New Jersey, 
where, due to the splendid work of William F. Varney, a strong 
party organization was built up and nine local officers were elected. 
In Minnesota seven Prohibitionists were elected to the Legisla- 
ture. In Ohio a splendid campaign for Congress was made by 
Valentine A. Schreiber who had been elected Prohibition mayor 
of East Liverpool. 

Altogether the Prohibition vote for Governors and Congress- 
men in the various states in 1914 was nearly half a million, the 
largest vote the Party had ever polled. The total was made up 
chiefly from a few sections where specially aggressive cam- 
paigns were conducted but these campaigns demonstrated the 
possibilities of success. They likewise demonstrated to the old 
parties that there was danger of a large loss of votes unless they 
took some action to conciliate the dry voters. 

The most notable result of the 1914 campaign was the election 
to Congress of Charles H. Randall of the Ninth Congressional 
district of California, including part of Los Angeles and ad- 
jacent territory. 

One of the most interesting features of the Randall campaign 
was the work of a group of consecrated college students who 
made a house to house canvass of the voters of the district. 
Mr. Earl H. Haydock, of the University of Southern California, 
who the following December won the national oratorical contest 
of the Intercollegiate Prohibition Association held at Topeka, 
Kansas, went among the colleges of southern California and 
enlisted a group of about forty students who spent most of the 
summer vacation in prohibition campaign work. Every morning 
the campaigners would assemble at a designated center, hold an 
informal conference and study class, and compare their ex- 
periences and difficulties of the preceding day. Then after a 
season of prayer they would go in a body to some suburban town 
or a certain section of Los Angeles to carry on their canvass. 
They would knock at every door and ask the voters to support 


410 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the proposed state prohibition constitutional amendment which 
was to be voted on in November in order to make California 
“dry,’ and to support Charles H. Randall, Prohibition party 
candidate for Congress, in order to help make the United States 
“dry,” and furthermore to support no political party not com- 
mitted to the national destruction of the liquor traffic. The 
response to the national proposition was substantially equal to 
the response to the state proposition. They interviewed 27,000 
voters and nearly 20,000 were enrolled. Mr. Randall received 
about 27,500 votes. Their success was due largely to the 
splendid consecration and leadership of Mr. Haydock. 

In addition to the work of the college volunteers an extensive 
literature campaign was carried on and, during the latter part 
of the campaign, W. G. Calderwood, of Minnesota, the chairman 
of the Concentration Committee of the National Committee and 
one of the most able and experienced political managers in the 
history of the party, went to California and superintended the 
campaign. Mr. Randall’s subsequent incomparable service during 
his three terms in Congress abundantly justified the efforts put 
forth to elect him. 

In 1915 a concentration campaign was carried on in Massa- 
chusetts in behalf of William Shaw, the Prohibition candidate 
for Governor. Mr. Shaw had been for many years the General 
Secretary of the World Christian Endeavor movement. He 
was very popular among the better class of people. He made a 
tour of the state and the newspapers gave a large amount of 
attention to his campaign. The vote was multiplied about five 
times and the national prohibition issue received more recognition 
than ever before. A week or so before election the prospect of 
his polling a very large vote so frightened the Republican or- 
ganization that at the last moment it brought tremendous pres- 
sure upon the church people lest the Republican party be de- 
feated. Besides, the liquor interests, fearing that the defeat of 
the Republican party on the prohibition issue would force that 
party to take a stand against the liquor traffic in the next cam- 
paign, threw their support to the Republican candidate. With 
the combination of the partisan Republican church voters and 
the liquor vote the Republicans won by a small margin. 

One of the items of the Indianapolis Program of 1913 had for 
its object the enrollment of five million voters who would sign an 
agreement to make the prohibition issue the supreme issue in their 
political action. There were several forms of enrollment pledge 
circulated but the one most generally used was known as the 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 411 


Shaw pledge, having originated with William Shaw. It read: 


God being my Helper, henceforth no political party can have 
my support or vote that does not declare for the national destruc- 
tion of the liquor traffic. 


There were several individual workers who secured more than 
one thousand enrollments each and some of the speakers secured 
them in large numbers. Excellent progress was made in certain 
sections but there was not the organization or force to promote it 
uniformly enough over the country to make it succeed. 

In 1913, the Anti-Saloon League, after having devoted the 
greater share of its efforts to obtaining local option, came out for 
national constitutional prohibition. It held its national conven- 
tion at Columbus, Ohio, in November, 1913. That was a great 
turning-point in that organization’s history. An able group of 
speakers including several outstanding Prohibition party leaders 
participated in the program and plans for achieving national con- 
stitutional prohibition were adopted. 

Just following that convention there was held a notable con- 
ference at which representatives of practically every temperance, 
prohibition and anti-liquor organization in the country were 
present. More than ninety organizations, large and small, gen- 
eral and local, were represented. These now agreed upon a 
common objective, one advocated for forty-four years by the 
Prohibition party, the national prohibition of the liquor traffic. 

Out of that conference was formed the National Temperance 
Council for the cooperation of all temperance groups along edu- 
cational lines. It has continued to meet annually ever since. 
It is composed of about two hundred and fifty of the most promi- 
nent temperance leaders of the nation. 

At the Columbus meeting a number of the leaders of the dif- 
ferent groups were gathered together and were discussing the 
prohibition situation, These leaders felt the need of a more 
commanding campaign of education and agitation, especially to 
reach the cities of the country. 

The outcome was that the Flying Squadron of America was 
organized. Former Governor Hanly of Indiana was chosen as 
leader and under his leadership there was assembled a group of 
some of the ablest speakers of the period. The name, Flying 
Squadron, was a naval term suggested by Captain Hobson, the 
hero of the Merrimac in the Spanish-American War, then, in 
1913, the outstanding dry leader in Congress. 

Beginning in September, 1914, the Flying Squadron made an: 


412 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


unprecedented campaign, visiting every state, every capital city, 
nearly every large city and educational center in the country. 
A series of three-day meetings, with sessions both afternoon and 
evening was held in two hundred and fifty-five cities in about 
eight months. These meetings received the hearty cooperation 
of the Prohibitionists all over the country and were very suc- 
cessful. The speakers were: Governor J. Frank Hanly, Oliver 
W. Stewart, Daniel A. Poling, Ira Landrith, Charles M. Shel- 
don, Wilbur F. Sheridan, Eugene W. Chafin, Clinton N. How- 
ard, Charles Scanlon, Clarence True Wilson, John B. Lewis, 
Dr. Carolyn E. Geisel, Dr. Ella A. Boole, Mrs. Culla J. Vay- 
hinger and Mrs. Ella Seass Stewart.’ 

The campaign caught the imagination of the country. Large 
audiences attended the meetings and that campaign of the Flying 
Squadron was a tremendous factor in crystallizing the sentiment 
for national constitutional prohibition. 

The Flying Squadron had as an enlistment pledge: 


We stand for the abolition of the liquor traffic. On this issue 
we fight. Whenever a politician or an executive officer or a polit- 
ical party prefers the liquor traffic above public morals, such a 
man must be set aside and such parties abandoned. 


Another influential organization, which was initiated largely 
by the Prohibitionists, was the Committee of Sixty on National 
Prohibition which was organized early in 1916. 

Its object was to bring to the support of the prohibition move- 
ment additional outstanding leaders of the nation. 

It grew out of a conference which National Chairman Hinshaw 
had with Mr. James J. Hill, the noted railroad builder of the 
Northwest, in 1915 and Mr. Hill’s suggestion that such a com- 
mittee be formed. After further preliminary conferences Pro- 
fessor Irving Fisher, Professor of Political Economy in Yale 
University, led in organizing the Committee, enrolling in its mem- 
bership a very influential group of the intellectual leaders of 
the nation. 

It was committed to the five million voters pledge movement. 
Its especial objective was to secure unequivocal declarations in 
favor of national prohibition by political parties and candidates. 

Its pledge as perfected was: 


In the interest of national security, prosperity, public health and 
morals we favor the prohibition of the liquor traffic and to this 
end we urge the adoption of prohibition planks in the platforms of 
all political parties and candidates. 

2 See Speeches of the Flying Squadron. 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 413 


Representatives of the Committee of Sixty appeared before the 
Platform Committees of the Republican, Democratic and Pro- 
gressive national conventions in 1916 but did not meet with much 
encouragement. 

The officers were: Honorary President, Dr. David Starr 
Jordan, Chancellor of Leland Stanford Jr. University. 

President, Dr. Daniel A. Poling, Associate President United 
Society of Christian Endeavor. 

Vice-Presidents: Luther Burbank, the famous plant wizard of 
California; Dr. Samuel Dickie, President of Albion College ; 
Hon, Richmond P. Hobson, former Congressman; Dr. J. N. 
Hurty, Secretary of the Indiana State Board of Health: Mr. 
John B. Lennon, Treasurer of the American Federation of Labor; 
Dr. William F, Slocum, President of Colorado College; and 
Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, former Chief of the U. S. Bureau of 
Chemistry. 

Secretary, Dr. D. Leigh Colvin, National President of the 
Intercollegiate Prohibition Association. 

Treasurer, Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Superintendent of the Battle 
Creek Sanitarium. 

Subsequently Professor Irving Fisher became President. 

A subcommittee, composed of Professor Fisher, former Gov- 
ernor Eugene N. Foss of Massachusetts, and Mr. Ernest Gordon, 
obtained one thousand signatures to a Memorial for National 
Prohibition which was presented to Congress on April 5, 1917, 
the day before the United States entered the World War. 

Those who signed the Memorial included many of the captains 
of industry and business executives as well as leading scientists, 
economists, social workers, university presidents and professors, 
and leaders in every walk of life. 

The combined strength of influence of those who signed the 
Memorial gave a large impetus to the movement for national 
prohibition. 

The Committee of Sixty also had a large part in the movement 
for war prohibition. 


THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF 1916 


The National Convention of 1916 was held at St. Paul, July 
Ig to 21. Daniel A. Poling was Temporary Chairman, Howard 
I’, Kershner, of Kansas, Secretary, and W. F. Varney, of New 
Jersey, and Miss Minnette Murphy, of Iowa, assistant secretaries. 


414 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Dr. Poling delivered a campaign keynote speech having as a 
slogan “Save America and Serve the World.” Robert H. Pat- 
ton was Permanent Chairman. 

The striking feature of the convention was that Prohibition 
had become so popular there were three former Governors of 
three prominent states, each of whom was a receptive candidate 
for the presidential nomination—Hanly of Indiana, Sulzer of 
New York and Foss of Massachusetts. Former Governor Hanly 
of Indiana was nominated on the first ballot. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. J. Frank Hanly was born in a log cabin in 
Illinois in 1863. Without any advantages, by hard work, de- 
termined will and sheer force of character he advanced until he 
had become Governor of his state at the age of forty-one. At 
thirteen years of age he started out to make his way in the 
world as a hired hand on a farm. Barefoot, he trudged into the 
state of which he was to be the Chief Executive. He taught 
school in the winter for seven years. He studied law and was 
admitted to the bar in 1889. In 1890 he was elected to the State 
Senate and in 1894 to Congress. In 1898 he was narrowly de- 
feated in the Republican legislative caucus for United States 
Senator by a coalition of all the opposition after a memorable 
contest. In 1904 he was elected Governor by a plurality that was 
without precedent in Indiana. 

In his inaugural address he antagonized the liquor traffic. He 
served as Governor for four years and it was said that in that 
period there were instituted more vital reforms and laws for the 
promotion of honesty and efficiency in government than in any 
other two administrations in Indiana combined. He drove the 
grafter from the State Capitol thereby incurring the enmity of a 
certain group of politicians. As a result of his experience in the 
Governor’s chair he came to have an increasing and deepening 
realization of the indescribable tragedies of the liquor traffic 
and of the effects of that traffic upon the interests of the state. 
Under the constitution of the state he could not succeed himself 
but at the Republican state convention of 1908, in the last year 
of his term, through his personal power he influenced the con- 
vention to adopt a county option plank in spite of the bitter an- 
tagonism of many of the members of his party. 

Taking no chances of the politicians going back upon their 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 415 


platform pledges, Governor Hanly proceeded to catry the plank 
into effect before election by calling a special session of the 
Legislature and putting through the desired law. At the suc- 
ceeding election the liquor interests threw their balance of power 
to the Democrats and defeated the Republicans, whereupon the 
Republican politicians became even more bitter against Governor 
Hanly. 

Fe was three times Chairman of the Committee on Temperance 
of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
and had a large part in preparing the utterances of that great 
church upon prohibition. Through a number of years he was 
recognized as one of the ablest men on the lecture platform in 
the country and headed the nation-wide speaking campaign of 
the Flying Squadron. He also edited the National Enquirer, 
founded in 1915. He hesitated to leave the Republican party 
which had honored him so highly but when he became convinced 
there was no hope of that party taking a position against the 
liquor traffic he courageously severed his connection with it, writ- 
ing two editorials which were widely circulated, one entitled 
“Severed,” and the other, “Obedient to the Vision.” 

No portrayal of Governor Hanly would be adequate which 
does not include a famous passage from one of his addresses 
entitled, “I Hate It.’ 


piNEvAnmM Ts} 

I bear no malice towards those engaged in the liquor business, 
but I hate the traffic. 

I hate its every phase. 

I hate it for its intolerance. 

I hate it for its arrogance. 

I hate it for its hypocrisy; for its cant and craft and false pre- 
tense; 

I hate it for its commercialism; for its greed and avarice; for its 
sordid love of gain at any price. 

I hate it for its domination of politics; for its corrupting influ- 
ence in civic affairs; for its incessant effort to debauch the suf- 
frage of the country, for the cowards it makes of public men. 

I hate it for its utter disregard of law; for its ruthless trampling 
of the solemn compacts of State constitutions. 

I hate it for the load it straps to labor’s back: for the palsied 
hands it gives to toil; for its wounds to genius; for the tragediés 
of its might-have-beens. 

I hate it for the human wrecks it has caused. 

I hate it for the almshouses it peoples; for the prisons it fills; 


416 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


for the insanity it begets; for its countless graves in potters’ fields. 
I hate it for the mental ruin it imposes upon its victims; for its 
spiritual blight; for its moral degradation. 

I hate it for the crimes it commits; for the homes it destroys; 
for the hearts it breaks. 

I hate it for the malice it plants in the hearts of men; for its 
poison; for its bitterness; for the dead sea fruit with which it 
starves their souls. 

I hate it for the grief it causes womanhood—the scalding tears, 
the hopes deferred, the strangled aspirations, its burden of want 
and care. 

I hate it for its heartless cruelty to the aged, the infirm and 
the helpless; for the shadow it throws upon the lives of children; 
for its monstrous injustice to blameless little ones. 

I hate it as virtue hates vice, as truth hates error, as righteousness 
hates sin, as justice hates wrong, as liberty hates tyranny, as 
freedom hates oppression. 

I hate it as Abraham Lincoln hated slavery, and as he sometimes 
saw in prophetic vision the end of slavery, and the coming of the 
time when the sun should shine and the rain should fall upon no 
slave in all the Republic, so I sometimes seem to see the end of 
this unholy traffic, the coming of the time when, if it does not wholly 
cease to be, it shall find no safe habitation anywhere beneath Old 
Glory’s stainless stars. 


For Vice-President. The 1916 convention, having chosen one 
who had recently been a Northern Republican for President, chose 
one who had been recently a Southern Democrat for Vice-Presi- 
dent. Ira Landrith was Texan born, of a stature to comport 
with the dimensions of that state. He had been Chairman of the 
Tennessee State Committee of the Young Men’s Christian As- 
sociation for twenty-one years and had served as President of the 
preceding International Convention of that great organization. 
He had served as Moderator of the General Assembly of his 
church and had been for years the editor of the leading paper 
of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He was one of the 
leaders in Tennessee in the fight which outlawed the liquor 
traffic in that state. He was one of the prominent members of 
the Flying Squadron and he had served for some years as Presi- 
dent of Ward Belmont College at Nashville. 

The platform of 1916, in decided contrast to the two pre- 
ceding ones, was the longest in the history of the party. There 
were twenty planks and only about one-twentieth of the platform 
was devoted to prohibition. 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 417 


THE PLATFORM OF I916 


The Prohibition party, assembled in its Twelfth National Con- 
vention in the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, on this twenty-first day 
of July, 1916, thankful to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty, 
grateful for our institutions and the multiplying signs of early vic- 
tory for the cause for which the Party stands, in order that the 
people may know the source of its faith and the basis of its action, 
should it be clothed with governmental power, challenges the at- 
tention of the Nation and asks the votes of the people on this Dec- 
laration of Principles. 


Prohibition 


We denounce the traffic in intoxicating liquors. We believe in 
its abolition. It should be made a crime—not a business—and 
ought not to have governmental sanction. 

We demand—and, if given power, we will effectuate the de- 
mand—that the manufacture, importation, exportation, transporta- 
tion and sale of alcoholic liquors for beverage purposes shall be 
prohibited. 

To the accomplishment of this end, we pledge the exercise of 
all governmental power—the enactment of statutes and the amend- 
ment of the constitutions, State and National. Only by a political 
party committed to this purpose can such policy be made effective. 
We call upon all voters, believing in the destruction of the drink 
trafic, to place the Prohibition party in power on this issue as a 
necessary step in the solution of the liquor problem. 


Suffrage 


The right of citizens of the United States to vote should not 
be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on ac- 
count of sex. We declare in favor of the enfranchisement of 
women by amendments to State and Federal Constitutions. 

We condemn the Republican and Democratic parties for their 
failure to submit, to the States, an equal suffrage amendment to 
the National Constitution. 

We remind the four million women voters that, in 1872, we de- 
clared for their political rights, the first so to do, and we invite 
their cooperation in electing the Prohibition party to power. 


Peace and Preparedness 


We are committed to the policy of peace and friendliness to all 
nations. We are opposed unalterably to the wasteful military pro- 


418 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


gram of the Democratic and Republican parties. Militarism pro- 
tects no worthy institution. It endangers them all and violates the 
high principles which have brought us as a Nation to the present 
hour. We are for a constructive program in preparedness for 
peace. We declare for, and will promote, a World Court, to which 
national differences shall be submitted, so maintained as to give 
its decrees binding force. 

We will support a compact among nations to dismantle navies and 
disband armies; but, until such World Court and compact are es- 
tablished, we pledge ourselves to maintain an effective army and 
navy and to provide coast defenses entirely adequate for national 
protection. 

We are opposed to universal military service and to participation 
in the rivalry which has brought Europe to the shambles and now 
imperils the civilization of the race. 

Private profit, so far as constitutionally possible, should be taken 
out of the manufacture of war munitions and all war equipment. 

In normal times, we favor the employment of the army in vast 
reclamation plans; in reforesting hills and mountains; in building 
state and national highways; in the construction of an inland water- 
way from Florida to Maine; in opening Alaska and in unnumbered 
other projects, which will make our soldiers constructive builders 
of peace. or such service there should be paid an adequate in- 
dustrial wage. 

Those units of our navy which are capable of being converted 
into merchantmen and passenger vessels should be constructed with 
that purpose in view, and chiefly so utilized in times of peace. 

We condemn the political parties, which for more than thirty 
years have allowed munition and war equipment manufacturers to 
plunder the people and to jeopardize the highest interests of the 
Nation by furnishing honeycombed armor plate and second-rate 
battleships, which the Navy League now declares are wholly in- 
adequate. 

We will not allow the country to forget that the first step toward 
physical, economic, moral and political preparedness is the enact- 
ment of National Prohibition. 


Mexico and the Monroe Doctrine 


Mexico needs not a conqueror, but a good Samaritan. We are 
opposed to the violation of the sovereignty of the Mexican people, 
and we will countenance no war of aggression against them. We 
pledge the help of this country in the suppression of lawless bands 
of marauders and murderers, who have taken the lives of American 
citizens, on both sides of the border, as well as of Mexicans in their 
own country. 

The lives and property of our citizens, when about their lawful 


a a 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 419 


pursuits, either in the United States or in Mexico, must and will be 
protected. In the event of a breakdown of government across the 
border, we would use, in the interests of civilization, the force nec- 
essary for the establishment of law and order. 

In this connection we affirm our faith in the Monroe Doctrine, 
proclaimed in the early days of the Nation’s life and unswervingly 
maintained for nearly a hundred years. 

We cannot claim the benefits of the Doctrine and refuse to as- 
sume or discharge the responsibilities and the duties which inhere 
therein and flow therefrom. 

These duties have long been unmet in Mexico. We should meet 
them now, acting, not for territory, not for conquest, or for our- 
selves alone, but for and with all the nations of North and South 
America. 

The Democratic party has blundered and four years ago the Re- 
publican evaded, and passed on, the problem that it now seeks the 
opportunity to solve. 


The Philippines 


The abandonment of the Philippines at this time would be an in- 
justice to them and a violation of our plain duty. As soon as they 
are prepared for self-government, by education and training, they 
should be granted their independence on terms just to themselves 
and us. 


Tariff and Reciprocity 


The countries at war are preparing for a fierce industrial strug- 
gle to follow the cessation of hostilities. As a matter of com- 
mercial economy, international friendliness, business efficiency, and 
as a help to peace, we demand that reciprocal trade treaties be 
negotiated with all nations with which we have trade relations. 

A Commission of specialists, free from the control of any party, 
should be appointed, with power to gather full information on all 
phases of the questions of tariff and reciprocity, and to recommend 
such legislation as it deems necessary for the welfare of American 
business and labor. 


Merchant Marine 


The necessity of legislation to enable American shipbuilders or 
owners to meet foreign competition, on the most favorable terms, 
is obvious. 

Materials for construction should be admitted free of duty. 

The purchase of ships abroad, when low prices invite, should be 


420 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


allowed and, when so purchased, should be admitted to American 
registry. 

Harbor rules and charges and navigation laws should not be 
onerous, but favorable to the highest degree. 

Liberal payment should be made by the Government for carry- 
ing mails and for transport services. 

All shipping from the United States to any of our possessions 
should be reserved to ships of American registry. 

The people should not overlook the fact that the effect of nation- 
wide Prohibition, on labor and industry, generally, will be such as 
to lower the cost of shipbuilding per unit and, at the same time, 
permit the payment of higher wages. The increased volume of 
trade and commerce, which will result when the wastage of the 
liquor traffic is stopped, will quicken our shipping on every sea and 
send our flag on peaceful missions into every port. This is urged 
as an incidental effect of wise action on the liquor question, but 
is none the less to be desired’ and will aid in the solution of the 
problem of our merchant marine. 


Civil Service 


In order that the public service may be of the highest standard, 
the Government should be a model employer in all respects. To 
enforce the civil service law, in spirit as well as in letter, all pro- 
motions should be non-political, based only upon proven fitness; all 
recommendations for demotions or removals from the service should 
be subjected to the review of a non-partisan board or commission. 

The merit system should be extended to cover all postmasters, 
collectors of revenue, marshals and other such public officials whose 
duties are purely administrative. 

We reaffirm our allegiance to the principle of secure tenure of 
office, during good behavior and capable effort, as the means of 
obtaining expert service. We declare for the enactment of an 
equitable retirement law for disabled and superannuated employees, 
in return for faithful service rendered, in order to maintain a high 
degree of efficiency in public office. 


Labor and Capital 


Differences between capital and labor should be settled through 
arbitration, by which the rights of the public are conserved, as 
well as those of the disputants. We declare for the prohibition 
of child labor in factories, mines and workshops; an eight-hour max- 
imum day, with one day of rest in seven; more rigid sanitary re- 
quirements and such working conditions as shall foster the physical 
and moral well-being of the unborn; the protection of all who toil 
by the extension of Employer’s Liability Acts; the adoption of 


EVENTS OF 19138 TO 1916 421 


safety appliances for the protection of labor; and for laws that 
will promote the just division of the wealth which labor and capital 
jointly produce. Provision should be made for those who suffer 
from industrial accidents and occupational diseases. 


Social Justice 


We stand for justice to humanity and for its rights, safety and 
development; we believe in the equality of all before the law; 
in old age pensions and insurance against unemployment and in 
help for needy mothers, all of which could be provided from what 
is now wasted for drink. 


Agriculture 


While it is admitted that grain and cotton are fundamental fac- 
tors in our national life, it cannot be denied that proper assistance 
and protection are not given these commodities at terminal markets, 
in the course of interstate commerce. 

We favor and pledge our efforts to obtain public grain elevators 
at necessary terminal markets, such elevators to be owned and 
operated by the Federal Government; also to secure Federal grain 
inspection under a system of civil service and to abolish any Board 
of Trade, Chamber of Commerce, or other place of gambling in 
grain or trading in “options” or “futures” or “short selling,’ or 
any other form of so-called speculation, wherein products are not 
received or delivered, but wherein so-called contracts are settled 
by the payment of “margins” or “differences” through clearing 
houses or otherwise. 

This party stands committed to free and open markets, based 
upon legitimate supply and demand, absolutely free from question- 
able practices of market manipulation. We favor Government 
warehouses for cotton at proper terminals where the interests of 
producers so require; and the absolute divorce of all railroad ele- 
vators or warehouses owned by railroad companies, whether for 
public or private use, from operation or control by private in- 
dividuals in competition with the public in merchandising grain, 
cotton and other farm products. 

We {furthermore endorse all proper cooperative methods which 
tend toward broader and better markets for producer and con- 
sumer. 


Public Ownership 


Public utilities and other resources, which are natural monopolies, 
now are exploited for personal gain under a monopolistic system. 


422 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


We demand the ownership or control of such utilities by the people 
and their operation and administration in the interests of all. 


Free Institutions 


We stand for the preservation and development of our free in- 
stitutions and for absolute separation of church and state, with 
the guaranty of full religious and civil liberty. 


Departmental Decisions 


Departmental decisions ought not to be final, but the rights of 
the people should be protected by provision for court review. 


Conservation 


We reaffirm our declaration’ in favor of conservation of forests, 
water power and other natural resources. 


E fficiency 


We pledge a business-like administration of the nation’s affairs: 
the abolition of useless offices, bureaus and commissions; economy 
in the expenditure of public funds; efficiency in governmental serv- 
ice; and the adoption of the budget system. 

The President should have power to veto any single item or 
items of an appropriation bill. 

We condemn, and agree when in power to remedy, that which is 
known as “pork-barrel” legislation, by which millions of dollars 
have been appropriated for rivers where there is no commerce, har- 
bors where there are no ships and public buildings where there is 
no need. 


Marriage and Divorce 
We favor uniform marriage and divorce laws, the extermination 
of polygamy and the complete suppression of the traffic in girls and 
women. 
Single Presidential Term 
We are in favor of a single presidential term of six years. 


Rule of the People 


We favor the initiative, referendum and recall. 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 423 


Americanism 


We stand for Americanism. We believe this country was created 
for a great mission among the nations of the earth. We rejoice 
in the fact that it has offered asylum to the oppressed of other 
lands and to those, more fortunately situated, who yet wished to im- 
prove their condition. It is the land of all peoples and belongs 
not to any one—it is the heritage of all. It should come first in 
the affection of every citizen, and he who loves another land more 
than this is not fit for citizenship here; but he is a better citizen, 
who, loving his country, has reverence for the land of his fathers, 
and gains from its history and traditions that which inspires him 
to nobler service to the one in which he lives, 

The Federal Government should interest itself in helping the 
newcomer into that vocation and locality where he shall most quickly 
become an American. Those fitted by experience and training for 
agricultural pursuits should be encouraged to develop the millions 
of acres of rich and idle land. 


Conclusion 


This is the day of opportunity for the American people. The 
triumph of neither old political party is essential to our safety or 
progress. The defeat of either will be no public misfortune. They 
are one party. By age and wealth, by membership and traditions, 
by platforms and in the character of their candidates, they are the 
Conservative party of the United States. 

The Prohibition party, as the promoter of every important meas- 
ure of social justice presented to the American people in the last 
two generations, and, as the originator of nearly all such legislation, 
remains now the only great Progressive party. 

The patriotic voters, who compose the Republican and Democratic 
parties, can, by voting the Prohibition ticket this year, elect \ the 
issue of National Prohibition. 

To those, of whatever political faith, who have the vision of a 
land redeemed from drink, we extend a cordial invitation to join 
with us in carrying the banner of Prohibition to nation-wide victory. 


THE CAMPAIGN 


The notification meeting was held at Indianapolis, the home 
of Governor Hanly. He gave a comprehensive address which 
will always stand as a state paper of the first rank. 

For the campaign a special campaign committee was formed 
with Oliver W. Stewart as Chairman. The outstanding feature 

3 Vindicator, Aug. 11, 1916; also issued in pamphlet form. 


4:24 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of the campaign was a special train carrying the candidates from 
Coast to Coast. It started from Chicago, September 8th, and 
continued until election, going first to the Pacific Coast and then 
to the Atlantic Coast and back to Chicago. It covered nearly 
20,000 miles in thirty-four states, and stops were made for from 
five to fifteen meetings a day. 

The emphasis by the candidates was chiefly upon the prin- 
ciple of prohibition rather than upon the distinctively party argu- 
ment. Both were new converts to the Party and, naturally, were 
not as fully grounded in the party philosophy as some of the 
earlier candidates. Statewide referendum campaigns were being 
held in half a dozen states and the candidates made special 
efforts to help carry those states. In the special train campaign 
Hanly and Landrith had an influential part in five of them. As 
Governor Hanly stated after the election: 


Wherever we spoke we gave first consideration to the dry issue, 
telling the people, without qualification, that they might vote us up 
or vote us down, if they would only redeem their state by making 
it dry. 

The ticket was on the ballot in forty-four states. Owing to 
the tremendous pressure of the old party organizations in the last 
week of the campaign when it was foreseen that the election was 
going to be very close between Wilson and Hughes, the Prohibi- 
tion national vote was disappointing. In a number of states the 
state ticket went considerably ahead of the national. In nine 
states the high vote for state candidates reached a total of 
183,000 more than the vote for the national candidates. In 
Minnesota W. G. Calderwood received 78,426 votes for United 
States Senator. — 


SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY, IQIO-I9I9Q 


Prohibition Party. 
American Prohibition Year Book, 1910, IQII, 1912, I915, 1916. 
CHAFIN, EUGENE W.—The Master Method of the Great Re- 
form, 1913, 156 pp. Contains 1912 Acceptance Speech 
and five other leading addresses. 
Government by Administration, Address, 1912, 16 pp. 
-One Standard of Morals, Address, 1911, 16 pp. 
Government by Political Parties, 1910, 16 pp. 
Howarp, Crinton N.—The Handwriting on the Wall, Speech 
of Temporary Chairman Prohibition National Conven- 
tion, 1912, 16 pp. 











EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 425 


Watkins, Aaron S.—Why I Am a Prohibitionist, 1912, 8 pp. 

Patton, Ropert H.—The Real Progressive Party, 1912, 8 pp. 

CALDERWOOD, W. G.—The Faith of the Fathers, 1912, 8 pp. 

FANNING, M. J.—Notification Address to Pennsylvania Candi- 
dates, I912, 16 pp. 

Potine, DanteEL A.—Save America and Serve the World, Key- 
note Speech, Prohibition National Convention, 1916. 

PERRIGO, JAMES—The Sheriff, 1911, 85 pp. 

Pickett, L. L_—The Booze Devil, 1914, 84 pp. 

HeENprRICKSON, FINLEY C.—The Constitution and Prohibition, 
1918, 24 pp. 

SHAW, ELton R.—At the Parting of the Ways, 1911, 40 pp. 

MacNricuHott, Dr. T. ALEXANDER—The Relation of Alcohol to 
Race Suicide, 1912, 4 pp. 

CALDERWooD, W. G.—Do It Right First, An Analysis of County 
Option. 

SHIELDS, JOHN A.—A Discussion of Methods. 


Results of State Prohibition. 


Stusss, Gov. W. R.—Prohibition in Kansas, 1910, 32 pp. 

Capper, Gov. ArtHuUR—What Prohibition Has Done for 
Kansas, 1915, 16 pp. 

Jounson, WitttaAm J.—The Question Answered, How Prohibi- 
tion Works, Experience of Omaha, Denver, Portland, 
meattle, TOTS, 31) pp. 

JoHnson, Witt1Am E.—Ten Years of Prohibition in Okla- 

homa, 1918, 96 pp. 

- Prohibition in Kansas, 1918, 89 pp. 

Gorpon, Ernest—The Maine Law, 1919, 124 pp. 

Biug, F. O.—When a State Goes Dry (West Virginia), 1916, 
II4 pp. 

MarsHALL, T., K.—The First Six Months of Prohibition in 
Arizona, 1915, 73 pp. 

Wine, Henry A.—Maine’s War on the Liquor Traffic, 1911, 
So pp. 

CraFts, WiitBur F.—Prohibition Handbook (Written for the 
campaign in Maine), I9II, 94 pp. 

Anti-Saloon League Year Book, published annually since 1908. 





Prohibition—General. 


JoHNson, Wirt1Am E.—The Federal Government and the 
Liquor Traffic, 1911, 364 pp. 


426 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Hanty, J. Franx—Editor, Speeches of the Flying Squadron, 
IQ15, 420 Ppp. 

Eaton, E. L.—Winning the Fight Against Drink, 1912, 344 pp. 

Crooxker, J. H.—Shall I Drink, 1914, 255 pp. 

DurkKEE, J. H.—History of the World’s Centennial Congress, 
1908, 199 pp. 

FisHer, Pror. Irvinc—Sale of Intoxicating Liquor, Statement 
before Subcommittee on Excise and Liquor Legislation 
of the Committee on the District of Columbia, 1912, 
21 pp. 

Gorpon, Ernest—The Anti-Alcohol Movement in Europe, 

1913, 333 PP- 

The Breakdown of the Gothenburg System, I91I, 155 pp. 

Russian Prohibition, 1916, 80 pp. 

STELZLE, CHaRLEsS—Why Prohibition?, 1918, 336 pp. 

NicHotts, Joun A.—Does It Pay? Economic Studies in the 
Liquor Problem, 1912, booklet, 45 pp. 

SroppaRp, Cora Frances—Alcohol’s Ledger in Industry, 
IQI4, 22 pp. 

Ritter, Cot. Err F.—Moral Law and Civil Law, 1910, 278 pp. 

Crarts, Dr. and Mrs. WitBur F.—The World Book of Tem- 
perance, IQII, 410 pp. 

Crarts, Witsur F.—Why Dry? Briefs for Prohibition, 1918, 
126 pp. 

Pickett, Deets—The Cyclopedia of Temperance, Prohibition 
and Public Morals, 1917, 406 pp. 

WILSON, CLARENCE TruE—Dry or Die; The Anglo-Saxon 
Dilemma, 1912, 186 pp. 

HayLer, Guy—Prohibition Advance in All Lands, 1913, 366 
pp. (Mr. Hayler is President of the World Prohibition 
Federation. ) 

Beman, L. T.—Selected Articles on Prohibition (Debater’s 
Handbook Series), 1915, 1608 pp. 

BatLey, T. J.—Prohibition in Mississippi, 1917, 224 pp. 

Nicuots, Emmett D.—The Second Declaration of Independ- 
ENCE \ TOES Fa 7npy, 

Winning Orations in the National Contests of the Intercollegiate 
Prohibition Association, 7th Ed., 1917, 184 pp. 

RicHARDSON, NorMAN E.—The Liquor Problem, 1915, 140 pp. 

Report of the Commission to Investigate Drunkenness in Massa- 
chusetts, 1914, 42 pp. 

National Conference on Social Work, Proceedings, I919, pp. 
761-782. Articles on Prohibition and Its Social Con- 








EVENTS OF 19r3 TO 1916 427 


sequences by Robert A. Woods, Prof. Irving Fisher and 
others. 


War Prohibition. 


Pickett, DEEts—The Wooden Horse or America Menaced by 
a Prussianized Trade, 1918, 87 pp. 
FIsHER, Pror, Irvinc—The Case for War-Time Prohibition, 


4 pp. 
BALLINGER, WALTER F.—Quick Relief for the Nation, pam- 


phlet, 4 pp. 

CarVER, Pror, THomas N.—Government Control of the Liquor 
Business in Great Britain and the United States, 1919, 
192 pp. 

Crarts, WiLBuRr F.—Why War Prohibition?, 1918, 32 pp. 

International Reform Bureau—Conservation of Food and Other 
Resources of War Prohibition. Extracts from Congres- 
sional Record, June 18, 1917, 16 pp. 

Howarp, Crinton N.—The World on Fire—National Pro- 
hibition Demanded as Emergency War Measure, Address, 
IQI7, 24 pp. 

STODDARD, Cora F.—Shall We Save Beer and Wine? 1917, 
16 pp. 

RANDALL, CHARLES H.—Telegraphic Demands for War-Time 
Prohibition. Reprint from Congressional Record of 
June 20, I917. 

For a summary of efforts for War Prohibition in Congress, see 
Crarts, W. F.—Dates and Data for a History of Na- 
tional Prohibition in Twentieth Century Quarterly, Winter 
Quarter, 1920-1921. 

The following three British books were influential here : 

Mer, ArtHurR, and Hoipen, J. Sruart—Defeat or Victory, 
IQI7, 120 pp. 

Meg, ArtrHuR—The Fiddlers, 1917, 65 pp. 

ute barasite; TOL7 4701p. 








Scientific, 


Dover, R., and Benepict, Francis G.—Psychological Effects 
of Alcohol, 1915, 281 pp. 

Mites, Watter R.—The Effect of Alcohol on Psycho-Physio- 
logical Functions, 1918, 144 pp. | 

Fisk, Euc—Ene Lyman—Alcohol, Its Relation to Human Ef- 
ficiency and Longevity, 1917, 286 pp. 


428 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Ketynack, T. N. (editor)—The Drink Problem of Today in 
its Medico-Sociological Aspects (English), 1916, 318 pp. 

Hosgson, RrcumMonp P.—The Great Destroyer, Speech, Febru- 

ary 2, LOLL, @o pp. 

Alcohol and the Human Race, 1919, 205 pp. 

Maus, Cou. L. Mervin—Alcohol and Racial Degeneracy, 1914, 
13 pp. 

a Gs Cora FRANCES—Handbook of Modern Facts About 
Alcohol, 1914, 105 pp. 

PARTRIDGE, G. E.—Studies in the Psychology of Intemperance, 
1O12, 275 pp. 

Howarp, Pror. Grorce Exttiotr—Alcohol and Crime, Ameri- 
can Journal of Sociology, July, 1918. 

For recent bibliography of scientific aspects of the alcohol ques- 
tion, see Fisuer, Irvine, and Fisk, EuGENE LyMan— 
How to Live, 18th edition, 1925, pp. 378-382. 





Prohibition Papers. 


The leading national newspapers of the Prohibition party were: 
American Advance, organ of the National Committee, 1911-1913; 
The Vindicator, 1911-1916; The Patriot Phalanx, 1917-1920. 

The chief state Prohibition newspapers of the decade were: 

Indiana, The Patriot Phalanx, published from the eighties to 
1920, except its first few years, by William F. Clark and his son, 
Edward W. Clark. From 1917 to 1920 it served as a national 
organ. Clean Politics of Indianapolis was a national propaganda 
weekly, edited by W. M. Likens from 1910 to 1914. 

Pennsylvania, The People, founded in 1887 and continued for 
over twenty years with several editors, one of the later being 
Orrin H. Graham. A daily newspaper performing great service 
to the Party was The Venango Daily Herald, published at Frank- 
lin for many years by David B. McCalmont who also was the 
publisher of The Vindicator, 1911 to 1916, the national organ 
edited by William P. F. Ferguson; The Clean Commonwealth, 
of Butler, edited by A. P. Hutchinson, was a vigorous paper; 
The Index, of Williamsport, has been published monthly since 
1892 by Dr. C. W. Huntington and continues at the present time. 

California, The California V oice is the longest lived Prohibi- 
tion paper in the history of the country. It is the successor of a 
temperance paper founded in 1855, and is still on the firing line. 
For fifty-six years it has been published under its present name, 


EVENTS OF 1913 TO 1916 4.29 


and for over a quarter of a century has been edited by Wiley 
J. Phillips, of Los Angeles, 

Illinois, The Banner, edited by George W. Woolsey; West 
Virginia, The Mountain State Patriot, edited by Dr. J. W. Bed- 
ford from 1902 to 1918; Iowa, The Jowa Prohibitionist, edited 
by Dr. O. D. Ellett; Nebraska, The Nebraska News, edited by 
J. L. Claflin; Wisconsin, The Campaigner, started in 1916, edited 
by Will C. Dean; Minnesota, The Northwestern Patriot, edited 
by George F. Wells; Missouri, The State Leader, edited for many 
years by Charles E. Stokes; Connecticut, The Voter, edited by 
FE. L. G. Hohenthal; Catholics and Prohibition was a Catholic 
Prohibition monthly, edited by Rev. Fr. George Zurcher from 
1908 to IgIQ, its successor now being published is The Father 
Mathew Man. 

In the New York Public Library can be found substantially 
complete files of The Voice, The New V oice, The National Pro- 
hibitionist, The Vindicator, The Citizen, The Defender, Clean 
Politics, and partial files of The Facts, The People, Backbone of 
Minnesota, The Patriot Phalanx, True Reform, Iowa Common- 
wealth, Missouri State Leader, The C alifornia Voice, The Corner- 
stone, The Lever, Oregon Searchlight, The Constitution, Flying 
Wedge, Frozen Truth, Backbone of New York, Intercollegiate 
Statesman, Prohibition Bombs and New Voice Leaflets, 


Chapter X XIIT 


THE PROGRESS OF STATE AND NATIONAL 
PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 


THE PROGRESS OF STATE PROHIBITION 


Prior to September, 1914, there were only nine prohibition 
states, there having been no net gain in the number of prohibition 
states for over five and one-half years. West Virginia had been 
gained in 1912 but in 1911 Alabama had been lost, temporarily. 
Of the nine states, in six prohibition had been adopted by a popu- 
lar vote. These were Maine; which four times had given popular 
majorities for prohibition, Kansas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, 
North Carolina and West Virginia. Three had adopted prohibi- 
tion by action of the legislature—Georgia, Mississippi and Ten- 
nessee. Three, Maine, Kansas and North Dakota, had adopted 
prohibition prior to 1890. There were no additions between 1889 
and 1907. The other six were since 1907. 

The year 1914 gave a great impetus to the movement for 
state prohibition. That year five states adopted prohibition by 
popular vote—Virginia, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and 
Arizona. Of these in all but Virginia it was adopted by means of 
the initiative and referendum. Virginia followed a roundabout 
method different from any other state. She did not have a gen- 
eral initiative and referendum law and the Legislature did not 
vote to submit. But it passed an enabling act permitting a vote 
upon the question of prohibition provided one-fourth of the 
number of those who had voted at the preceding election should 
petition for such a vote. 

Of the five states adopting prohibition in 1914 Virginia was 
the only one where the Legislature was involved in any way 
and there it did not take the responsibility either for adoption 
or submission. The Legislature merely passed an enabling act 
which was substantially a special initiative and referendum law 
to be applied to this one question. It did provide that if the ma- 
jority of the people voted for statewide prohibition the sale, 
manufacture for sale, and so forth, within the state should be 
unlawful. But manufacture for sale outside the state was per- 


mitted and the penalties were merely the same as they had been 
450 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 431 


for trafficking without a license. It was a very weak law and its 
going into operation was postponed for over two years after 
the vote.* 

In the other four states prohibition was distinctly a popular 
movement having been initiated and carried through by the people. 
Especially in Oregon and Arizona, the party Prohibitionists took 
the leadership in bringing on the vote and in the other states they 
were very active in the campaigns. Arizona adopted the most 
thoroughgoing constitutional provision yet adopted in any state. 
Anticipating that the Legislature would be politically constituted 
so as not to be favorable to the adoption of enforcement legis- 
lation, the initiated measure provided penalties within the measure 
itself. Thus action by the Legislature was not essential to carry 
it into effect. Much credit for prohibition in Arizona was due to 
Eugene W. Chafin, twice Prohibition candidate for President, 
who was then living in that state. 

In 1915 five more states passed prohibitory laws. Alabama, 
having experienced the contrast between prohibition, even poorly 
enforced, and license, returned to prohibition. The other states 
adopting prohibition in 1915 were Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho and 
South Carolina. In the latter state it was adopted by a popular 
vote, in the others it was passed by the Legislatures, 

The vote of South Carolina was very significant as that was 
the state where the dispensary system, the method of government 
monopoly, had been tried for many years under the most favor- 
able’ circumstances, having been administered by its friends 
whereas so often prohibition has been administered by its enemies. 
When the people had an opportunity to express their sentiments 
regarding whether they should continue the dispensary or adopt 
prohibition over 71 per cent voted in favor of prohibition. With 
the exception of Maine, which after trying prohibition for a third 
of a century voted in 1884 to place prohibition in its state con- 
stitution by a vote of nearly 75 per cent of those voting, South 
Carolina gave prohibition the largest percentage of the popular 
vote it had thus far received in any state. The fact that after 
years of most favorable trial the dispensary system was able to 
muster less than 29 per cent of the votes should be regarded as 
overwhelmingly decisive against the results of that system. 

In 1916 four more states were added, Michigan, Nebraska, 
South Dakota and Montana. In all of these prohibition was 
adopted by a popular vote and in all but Montana it was adopted 
by means of the initiative as well as the referendum. 

1 Virginia, ‘Acts of Assembly, 1914, p. 20. 


432 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


An analysis of the twenty states which adopted prohibition in 
the ten-year period 1907 to 1916, inclusive, in relation to the 
attitude of political parties and liquor’s ability to wield the bal- 
ance of power reveals significant facts. 

Of these twenty states, in seven prohibition was adopted by 
means of the initiative and referendum in which the vote was 
brought on by the initiative of a certain percentage of the voters 
petitioning for a vote on the proposition without the legislatures 
or the politicians having anything to do with the matter. 

Of the other thirteen states, in six it was submitted to a 
popular vote. In one of these, Oklahoma, it was submitted by the 
constitutional convention, in four it was submitted by the legis- 
lature, and in the sixth state, Virginia, the method, as described 
above, was by means of a special initiative and referendum. Of 
these six, all but West Virginia and Montana were one-party 
states. 

In seven states prohibition was enacted by the legislature, but 
of these all were one-party states with the single exception of 
Idaho. 

Idaho has the unique distinction of having been the single 
state in the whole history of the prohibition movement where all 
parties placed prohibition planks in their platforms prior to the 
enactment of prohibition. It is the only state where both major 
parties ever did so. In Idaho, in 1914, all parties, aside from the 
Socialist—the Republican, Democratic, Progressive and Prohibi- 
tion—placed prohibition planks in their platforms. That they 
did this was due largely to the acceptance of the party philosophy 
of the Prohibition party by the leaders of the larger parties. 

The consequence of this support by the parties was that the 
succeeding Legislature of 1915 not only enacted a statutory pro- 
hibition law, but, to make prohibition permanent, it submitted 
a prohibition constitutional amendment to be voted upon at the 
next election when it was adopted by a vote of 90,526 to 35,450. 
Subsequently, when the Eighteenth Amendment came before the 
Idaho Legislature it was ratified unanimously. 

It is very significant that in all the ten-year period prior to 
1917, during which twenty states went dry, the only close state 
where the legislature took the direct responsibility for the en- 
actment of the law was a state where all parties were committed 
to prohibition by platform declaration. With all parties com- 
mitted to prohibition the liquor traffic could not wield the balance 
of power. 

Idaho thus stands exalted in a class by herself. Aside from 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 433 


that state, in not a single close state did a legislature take the 
responsibility for enacting a prohibition law. And in only two 
close states did the legislature even so much as submit. the 
question to the people to let them decide. In both of those two 
states, West Virginia and Montana, there were unusual situa- 
tions. West Virginia was discussed in an earlier chapter. The 
vigorous activity of the Prohibition party was a factor in obtain- 
ing submission as a concession. In Montana the measure stub- 
mitted provided that if adopted it should not go into operation 
for more than two years after it received the vote of a ma jority 
of the people. The liquor interests helped to make the proposal 
drastic under the mistaken notion that by so doing they would 
make its defeat more likely.? 

Summarizing this analysis, in not a single state where the liquor 
trathe was able to wield the balance of power did the legislature 
enact a prohibition law and in only two such states were the legis- 
latures even willing to submit the question to the people, not- 
withstanding the remarkable growth of sentiment in that ten- 
year period. 

Prohibition was obtained by the people, separate from political 
parties. So far as the writer has been able to discover, there have 
been only three states where either one of the major parties 
adopted a clear cut platform declaration for prohibition prior to 
its enactment. Besides Idaho, these states were Washington and 
Utah where the Democratic platforms contained such planks in 
1910, and in the latter state in 1916. 

Nearly everywhere where the parties were approximately equal 
in size the politicians feared to incur the enmity of the liquor 
trafhe. The traffic maintained its power because it was able to 
elicit the obedience of the parties and party managers. 

From 1917 to 1919 ten more states adopted prohibition, all 
but three of which took a popular vote either upon the adoption of 
prohibition or upon the question of placing it in the state con- 
stitution. In Idaho in 1915, in Utah in 1917, and in Texas in 
1918 the Legislatures passed statutory prohibition and submitted 
constitutional prohibition to a popular vote, it carrying in each 
case. 

In Utah the Legislature of 1915 passed a prohibitory bill by a 
large majority but it was vetoed by the Republican Governor at 
the close of the legislative session when it could not be repassed 


2 Brewing and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda, Report 
and Hearings of the Subcommittee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty- 
sixth Congress, First Session (1919), p. 1175. 


434 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


over his veto. In 1916 the Democratic party adopted a strong 
prohibition plank and elected its ticket. So intense was the feeling 
that the whole Republican party was swept out of power in a state 
which in the preceding presidential election it had carried for 
Taft when only one other state, Vermont, had been carried. A 
Democratic dry Hebrew was elected Governor on a prohibition 
platform. The outcome was that the first act of the 1917 
Legislature was the passage of a drastic prohibition law by a 
unanimous vote in the Senate and with but one dissenting vote in 
the House. The Legislature also submitted a prohibition con- 
stitutional amendment. In the two states where prohibition was 
made a party principle in the platform of the successful party, 
Idaho and Utah, it went through the most successfully of any 
of the states. 

By the close of 1919 thirty-three states had adopted prohibi- 
tion, eight by legislative enactment and twenty-five by popular 
vote. Of the twenty-five, nine obtained prohibition by means of 
the initiative as well as the referendum. 

That prohibition had the overwhelming support of the people 
is shown by the fact that on the adopting vote the total prohibi- 
tion majority in these twenty-five states amounted to 662,717. 
If a vote had been taken in the other eight states the aggregate 
majority would have been much larger. 


POPULAR VOTES AND PROHIBITION 


In the early years of national prohibition wet propagandists 
persistently asserted that prohibition had been “put across” 
against the will of the majority of the people. 

In three-fourths of the states there has been an expression of 
the will of the people through direct, popular elections, the results 
of which had the binding effect of law. In these elections pro- 
hibition has received a majority vote in thirty of the thirty-two 
states. Some states have voted repeatedly, and in every case the 
latest vote has been the strongest for prohibition. The people 
have progressively supported prohibition. A study of the votes 
is absolutely convincing. 

The table below gives the list of prohibition states with the 
year of adoption; whether the prohibition was constitutional or 
statutory; whether enacted by the legislature or submitted by the 
legislature to a popular vote or obtained through the initiative 
and referendum; and also the popular majority in those states 
where the people voted directly. 


a ee a 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 


435 


TABLE SHOWING WHEN, HOW AND BY WHAT MAJORITY STATE 


PROHIBITION WAS ADOPTED 
Legislature 
When Statutory or Submission Vote Vote Majority 
State Adopted Constitutional Initiative For Against For 
1— Maine 1851 Statutory Legislature 
Maine 1884 Constitutional Submission 70,783 23,811 46,972 
2—Kansas 1880 Constitutional Submission 92,302 84,304 7,998 
3—North Dakota 1889 Constitutional Submission 18,552 £73393 1,159 
4—Georgia 1907. Statutory Legislature 
5s—Oklahoma 1907 Constitutional Const’l Conv. 130,361 Tih2.256 18,103 
6—Mississippi 1908 Statutory Legislature 
7—North Carolina 1908 Statutory Submission 113,612 69,416 44,196 
8—Tennessee 1909 Statutory Legislature 
o—West Virginia 1912 Constitutional Submission 164,945 72,603 92,342 
1o— Virginia 1914 Statutory Enabling Act 94,251 63,886 30,365 
r1—Oregon 1914 Constitutional Initiative 136,842 100,362 36,480 
12—W ashington 1914 Statutory Initiative 189,840 171,208 18,632 
13—Colorado 1914 Constitutional Initiative 129,589 118,017 11,572 
14—Arizona 1914 Constitutional Initiative 25,887 22,743 3,144 
15—Alabama 1915 Statutory Legislature 
16—Arkansas 1915 Statutory Legislature 
17—lowa 1915 Statutory Legislature 
18—Idaho 1915 Statutory Legislature 
Tdaho 1916 Constitutional Submission 90,576 25s450i) Be 720 
to—South Carolina 1915 Statutory Submission 41,735 16,809 24,926 
20—Montana 1916 Constitutional Submission 102,776 73,890 28,886 
2I—South Dakota 1916 Constitutional Initiative 65,334 53,360 1,974 
22—Michigan 1916 Constitutional Initiative 353,378 284,754 68,624 
23—Nebraska 1916 Constitutional Initiative 146,574 Tes ata 2 One Ate 
24—Indiana 1917 Statutory Legislature 
25—Utah to17 Statutory Legislature 
Utah 1918 Constitutional Submission 42,691 15,780 26,911 
26—New Hampshire 1917 Statutory Legislature 
27—New Mexico 1917 Constitutional Submission 28,732 32,147 || 16,585 
28—Texas 1918 Statutory Legislature 
Texas 1919 Constitutional Submission 150,723 140,099 19,624 
29—Ohio 1918 Constitutional Initiative 463,054 437,895 25,750 
30—W yoming 1918 Constitutional Submission 31,439 10,200 21,239 
31—Florida 1918 Constitutional Submission 21,851 13,609 8,242 
32—Nevada 1918 Statutory Initiative 13,248 9,060 4,188 
33—Kentucky 1919 Constitutional Submission 208,905 198,671 10,234 
Total ..... 2,837,580 2,274,863 662,717 
Total prohibition majority twenty-five states .........ccccccceceee 662,717 


More striking as evidences of prohibition sentiment have been 
the second or subsequent votes in those states which have voted 
upon the question more than once, the later vote having been taken 
after the people had an opportunity to experience the benefits and 
test the results of prohibition. Between 1916 and 1922 there 
were six states which previously had adopted prohibition by a 
popular vote which held a second referendum upon the question. 
In five of the six states the question at issue was whether the law 
should be modified to permit the return of beer or beer and wine. 

In every case a much larger majority was given after prohibi- 
tion had been tried than before. These six states in earlier elec- 
tions when prohibition was adopted gave a total prohibition 
majority of 164,211. But in the later votes they more than 
quadrupled the dry majority, increasing it to 695,057. 


436 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Tabulated, the votes were as follows: 











Adopting Election Later Election 

Pro. For Against Pro. 
Year Majority Year Prohibition Prohibition Majority 

PLEIZONA Wino) i IQI4 3,144 1916 28,473 17,379 11,094 

Golorado.asdiwa IQI4 I1,572 NOLO) “163.1 34 77 3245 85,78 
isreson | ieee 1914 36,480 IQI6 =: 140,599 85,973 54,626 
Washington .. I914 18,632 I9I6 = 245,399 98,843 146,550 
Michigan .... 1916 68,624 IQIQ 530,123 22,603 207,520 
CHIO" Sam hare 1918 25,759 1922 908,522 719,050 189,472 
164,211 2,016,250 1,321,193 695,057 
Ificreased’ majorieyrover first” VOtets. 2 Pecks coe cele eee ee eee 530,846 3 


The prohibition majority on the later votes was increased by 
530,846 which, added to the majority of 662,717 by which state 
prohibition was originally adopted makes the total later prohibi- 
tion majority 1,193,563 in the twenty-five states where prohibi- 
tion was originally adopted by a popular vote. 

In addition to the twenty-five states which adopted state pro- 
hibition as the result of popular votes there have been five other 
states which have given popular majorities for prohibition. In 
Arkansas, where the Legislature originally passed the prohibitory 
law, the wets brought on a vote in 1916 to try to repeal it and 
prohibition was upheld by a majority of 51,633. In Minnesota 
in 1918 a proposed amendment to the state constitution was sub- 
mitted and received a majority of the votes cast on the proposi- 
tion of 15,959. But inasmuch as that state has a provision 
requiring that to amend its constitution there must be a majority 
of all the votes cast in the election for any office, the prohibition 
amendment lacked 756 votes of the required constitutional ma- 
jority, due to the fact that it is seldom that as many votes are 
cast on a submitted proposition as there are for the candidates 
for office. 

In Missouri, in 1920, the wets brought on a referendum upon 
a prohibition enforcement law and the prohibition law was sus- 
tained by a majority of 61,299. <A fourth state, California, in 
1922 adopted a state prohibition enforcement law by a majority 
of 33,943. And, in 1924, Massachusetts, after two earlier de- 
feats, adopted a state prohibition act by a majority of 8,183. 
Adding these five states to the twenty-five states where prohibi- 


3 The State of Washington, in 1916, voted on two liquor propositions. One, 
the brewery or beer bill, was defeated by a vote of 245,399 to 98,843, by a 
majority of 146,556, as given above. The other was a hotel or general liquor 
bill. This was overwhelmed by a vote of 263,370 to 48,354, a majority of 
215,036. 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 437 


tion was adopted by a popular vote makes thirty states where 
prohibition has been upheld by a popular vote. Adding the 
majorities in the five states mentioned to the twenty-five where 
the majorities amounted to 1,193,563 gives a total prohibition 
majority in the thirty states voting for prohibition of 1,364,580. 

As against these thirty states which have given majorities for 
prohibition the striking fact is there are only two states in the 
entire Union, in which binding votes have been taken in the past 
sixteen years, since 1909, which in their latest votes gave ma- 
jorities against prohibition. These two states were Vermont, 
where prohibition was defeated in 1916 by an adverse majority 
of 13,164, and Iowa in 1917. 

Towa’s vote should hardly be regarded as against prohibition 
as the state was already under statutory prohibition and the vote 
was upon the question of placing it in the state constitution. The 
vote did not affect the continuance of statutory prohibition. 
There was too great overconfidence and indifference on the part 
of the drys. As they already had state prohibition some people 
did not see the need of making it constitutional with the result 
that constitutional prohibition lost by an adverse majority of 
only 932. 

That leaves Vermont as practically the black sheep of the 
states. There the campaign of 1916 was poorly managed on the 
dry side, false issues were raised by the opposition and it is very 
doubtful whether that vote represented the real sentiment of the 
state. 

Thus, including all the thirty-two states where a popular ex- 
pression of the public will has been taken, and counting both 
Vermont and Iowa as adverse, the score was thirty to two in 
favor of prohibition. In baseball parlance that would be called 
almost a “shut out” for the wets. 

The total net majority for prohibition in all the thirty-two 
states where votes have been taken amounted to 1,350,484, which 
is a larger majority than any President of the United States ever 
received, with the exception of President Roosevelt in 1904 and 
President Harding in 1920. It was a larger majority than Presi- 
dent Coolidge received in 1924. He received a large plurality but 
his majority was not as large as the total majority for prohibition 
in all the states where votes have been taken.* 

4 The Illinois vote of 1922 is not included. That was not a binding vote, but 
merely a kind of plebiscite under the Public Policy Act peculiar to that state. 
That vote was taken on an unconstitutional proposal and the dry leaders advised 


their followers to refrain from voting. Also the vote of Alabama in 1909 is 
not included as the merits of prohibition were not directly at issue. 


438 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


These figures absolutely disprove the unfounded assertion that 
prohibition was put across against the wishes of the people. 

Never in the history of the United States has any measure 
been voted upon so specifically, so widely, and received such over- 
whelming popular support as has the principle of prohibition.® 

Several interesting facts should be called to mind in studying 
the votes herein tabulated. 

I. The total vote in all the thirty-two states, counting the 
latest vote in all those states which have taken a second vote in 
the last ten years, amounted to 5,568,719 in favor of prohibi- 
tion to 4,218,235 against. The percentage of all the voters who 
were in favor of prohibition was 56.9 as against 43.1 who were 
opposed. 

2. In the six states which had a second vote after having 
adopted prohibition, in their adopting vote prohibition received 
53-3 percent. But after prohibition had been tried the percentage 
in favor of prohibition rose from 53.3 per cent to 60.4 per cent 
as against only 39.6 per cent opposed. On the later vote prohibi- 
tion made a gain of over seven per cent of the total vote. 

3. It should be noted that in the thirty states which have given 
majorities for prohibition are included six of the nine most 
populous states in the Union. Prohibition is by no means a 
measure which is supported merely by the rural populations as 
some wet propagandists would try to make the people believe. 

4. Of the thirty-two states above tabulated, in only about 
one-fourth of them was woman suffrage in operation when the 
vote was taken. If the votes of the women had been included, 


5 The vote for and against prohibition in addition to the twenty-five states 
tabulated above was: 





Year For Against Majority 
Ree CEM DAU ntr HSE UE Lei 1916 10,697 58,064 51,633 
Minnesota SER Ie ETRE Wat at ake 1918 189,574 173,615 15,059 
NER OUT TUL, MRS dee ne 1920 481,880 420,581 61,299 
Calstornia tae cc icone Lae 1922 445,076 411,133 33,943 
Massachusetts) sak Lian eee 1924 454,656 446,473 8,183 
LOCAL Tue tata Leas ee ae 1,680,883 1,509,866 171,017 
Total prohibition, majority, .thesectve istates: ©). .0-c4 sic oe ok a 1yue8rs 
Prohibition majority twenty-five states previously Piven fade lee aks sc 1,193,563 
Total prohibition majority, thistysstates (ctu 2s She eee ee a ae 1,364,580 
TABLE OF States AGAINST PROHIBITION 
Year For Against Majority 
PRINCE by. ck isla A ae ee 1916 18,503 31,667 13,164 
DN oA us ins atlas sthecedos os toc tte 1917 214,693 215,625 932 
Total anti-prohibition majority two states .........cseeecccccccce 14,096 


Total net prohibition majority in thirty-two) states@e Areas Tye eee 1,350,484 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 439 


not only would the totals have been much larger but the percentage 
in favor of prohibition would likely have been considerably aug- 
mented. In all elections held hereafter all the women can vote. 

5. Most significant of all perhaps is the attitude revealed in 
the popular votes toward the modification of prohibition to permit 
the return of beer and wine. 

There have been five states which had voted for prohibition 
wherein the liquor interests brought on a subsequent vote under 
the initiative and referendum upon the question of the modi- 
fication of the law to permit the return of beer or beer and wine. 
These five states were Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Michigan 
and Ohio. The latter two are populous states and presumably 
regarded by the liquor interests as the most favorable for their 
campaigns. 

In the adopting elections in these five states prohibition was 
supported by 53.3 per cent of the voters. In the subsequent vote 
upon beer, or beer and wine, prohibition received 60.4 per cent 
of the vote. Beer and wine were able to muster less than 4o 
per cent of the vote.® 

6. The fact that over 60 per cent of the people voted against 
modification to permit the return of beer and wine and that over 
seven per cent more of the total number of voters voted against 
beer and wine and in favor of retaining prohibition than voted 
for prohibition in the earlier election, before prohibition had been 
tried, should have been conclusive evidence that the people did 
not want to weaken the prohibition laws and, specifically, that 
they did not want the return of beer and wine. 

As against these five states there has been only one state in 
a real referendum which has given a majority in favor of beer 
and that was Massachusetts in 1920, in which the question was 
upon the adoption of a measure which declared that beverages 
containing not more than two and three-fourths per cent of 
alcohol should be “deemed not to be intoxicating liquor.’ This 
measure received 442,215 votes to 432,951 opposed, a majority 
of only 9,264 out of 875,166 votes, or a percentage of the total 
vote of only 50.5, and 118,552 of the voters who voted for 
President at the same election did not express themselves on this 
measure, intelligent voters knowing that the vote would not bring 
beer back as the proposal was contrary to the National Prohibition 
Act which was the supreme law of the land. 


6 The percentage of these five states voting on beer, or beer and wine, is the 
same as that in the second vote in the six states referred to in paragraph 2 above. 
Of the six states whose second votes are tabulated on page 436 all but Arizona 
voted on beer or beer and wine. 


440 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


However, at a succeeding vote in 1922 the wet majority was 
103,876 against a state enforcement measure, the vote that year 
having been complicated with another referendum on the censor- 
ship of motion pictures. But later, in 1924, this was turned to a 
dry majority of 8,183 for a similar measure. By 1924 the wets 
had lost their chief stronghold of all the states where votes had 
been taken and Massachusetts took its place in the list of states 
giving majorities for prohibition. 

These numerous and repeated statewide votes yielding increas- 
ing majorities in favor of prohibition were indubitable evidence 
that the sentiment of the people was strongly against the liquor 
traffic in all its forms and continued to grow stronger as time 
went on. 

Including the states where prohibition was adopted by the state 
legislatures but where no popular votes were taken, there have 
been thirty-seven states, over ‘three-fourths of the states of the 
Union where prohibition has received the direct support of the 
people or of their representatives. 


THE PROGRESS OF NATIONAL LEGISLATION 


For nearly fifteen years, ever since the Supreme Court’s de- 
cision in 1898 in the Rhodes v. lowa case construing the Wilson 
Law of 1890 to permit the bringing of liquor into a prohibition 
state for personal use, efforts had been made in Congress to try 
to get a law to protect prohibition states in the exercise of their 
police powers. These efforts met with defeat after defeat in 
Congress until 1913 when Congress passed the Webb-Kenyon 
Act and repassed it over President Taft’s veto. It was an act 
divesting intoxicating liquors of their interstate character under 
certain conditions. It prohibited the interstate transportation of 
liquor into a state or district when the liquor was intended to be 
received, possessed, sold or used in violation of the law of the 
state or district where consigned. 

The Webb-Kenyon Act provided no federal penalty. Its effect 
was to enable the states to pass laws to prevent the shipping in 
of liquor. The passage of this Act gave an impetus to the move- 
ment for state prohibition inasmuch as thereafter a state could 
enforce prohibition more effectively. Some of the prohibition 
states began to take advantage of this and, especially after the 
Supreme Court upheld the Webb-Kenyon Law in the decision 
in the case of the Clark Distilling Company v. Western Maryland 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 441 


Railroad Company in January, 1917, there were a number of 
states which enacted laws prohibiting the shipping in of intoxi- 
cants for personal use. These were known as “Bone Dry” laws. 

After 1913 there was no important federal legislation enacted 
until 1917 after half of the states had adopted prohibition. In 
February of that year a prohibition law for Alaska was passed, 
that territory having the year before voted for prohibition under 
a referendum authorized by the territorial Legislature. The vote 
was 9,052 to 4,835. In March the President signed a bill pro- 
viding for prohibition in Porto Rico subject to a referendum to 
the voters of the island. In the election in July it carried by a 
vote of 99,755 to 61,295. In March also there was signed the 
bill for prohibition for the District of Columbia which was passed 
after a long, hard and close fight. It went into effect Novem- 


her! 2.1997." 


THE ANTI-LIQUOR ADVERTISING AND BONE DRY LAW 


For many years it had been sought to break the influence which 
the liquor traffic held on many periodicals because of the liquor 
advertising furnished those periodicals. Congressman Randall 
of California in the Sixty-fourth Congress introduced a bill in 
the House to deny the use of the mails for liquor advertisements 
and conducted a five-day hearing on the bill before the Committee 
on Post Offices and Post Roads. About the same time Senator 
Jones of Washington introduced a similar measure in the Senate 
and the bill was known as the Jones-Randall bill. When the bill 
was pending before the Senate in February, I917, Senator Reed 
of Missouri, an aggressive wet, apparently thinking he would 
cause a reaction against prohibition by making it drastic, intro- 
duced an amendment which prohibited the transportation of bev- 
erage liquor into any state prohibiting the manufacture or sale of 
such liquor. Notwithstanding that some of the officers of the 
Anti-Saloon League, which had supported the compromising 
“quart laws” and “gallon a month” provisions in a number of 
the states, opposed the Reed Amendment, it was gladly and 
quickly accepted by the majority of the members of Congress and 
was enacted into law. This made every prohibition state a “bone 
dry”’ state so far as legal interstate shipment was concerned. 

The anti-advertising section of the law as enacted provided 


7 The votes in Alaska and Porto Rico are not included in the tabulation of 
prohibition majorities hereinbefore given, 


442 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


that no mail matter or publication containing any liquor adver- 
tisement could be deposited or carried in the mails if addressed 
to any place in any state in which it was unlawful to advertise 
or solicit orders for liquor. 


WAR PROHIBITION 


On April 6, 1917, the United States entered the World War. 
Patriotism was aroused as it had never been before in a genera- 
tion. The great objective was to win the war. To help win the 
war one of the most essentially needed steps was to stop the liquor 
traffic. A spontaneous demand for war prohibition sprang up 
all over the country. Seldom has America witnessed a more in- 
tense agitation than that for war prohibition during the spring 
and early summer of 1917. 

Among the reasons for war prohibition were: 

1. To conserve the food supply for the starving populations 
of the Allied countries. 

2. To save transportation. Lloyd George said that drink 
during the war had used up as much tonnage as the Germans 
had sunk with all their submarines. 

3. To save fuel used in the manufacture and transportation 
of liquor. 

4. To divert the labor of those engaged in the liquor traffic 
to essential purposes and lessen the labor shortage. 

5. To increase the efficiency of producers. By keeping sober 
the thousands daily incapacitated by drunkenness and by increas- 
ing the productive power of the multitudes who, though not 
drunk, were “slowed down” by alcohol, would augment produc- 
tion and add tremendously to the national resources. 

6. To conserve the man-power of the nation. 

Even before we entered the war there had been an increasing 
realization of the deleterious effect of alcohol upon military ef- 
ficiency. Thoughtful statesmen.in many countries were becoming 
alarmed because of the degeneracy caused by the widespread pro- 
motion of the consumption of alcohol. In 1915 out of 41,168 
applicants who presented themselves for enlistment in the United 
States Marine Corps only 3,833 were able to meet the physical 
requirements. 

With our entrance into the war there was brought into bold 
relief the blighting effect of alcohol upon the physical and mental 
capacity of the soldiers. On the other hand, the benefits of pro- 
hibition were revealed. According to Major-General Leonard 


aT a 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 44.3 


Wood, Kansas, a state under prohibition for thirty-six years, 
produced “‘the finest, the cleanest, the healthiest and the most 
vigorous soldiers in point of endurance that we have ever known. 
The official records show this. We attribute this to Kansas pro- 
hibition, Kansas boys were brought up in a clean atmosphere. 
They started right.” 

The above and other powerful arguments were used in behalf 
of war prohibition. It should be said that the international in- 
fluence was no small factor. Lloyd George had said: “We have 
three foes: Germany, Austria and Drink; and the greatest of 
these is Drink.” Also three books published by the “Strength of 
Britain Movement,” one by Arthur Mee and the Reverend J. 
Stuart Holden, entitled Defeat or Victory, and two others by 
Mr. Mee, entitled The Fiddlers and The Parasite which were 
republished here, had a large influence in stirring up sentiment 
for war prohibition. 

The Prohibition party leaders, the Woman’s Christian Tem- 
perance Union, the International Reform Bureau, the Committee 
of Sixty, the “Strengthen America” campaign of the Federal 
Council of Churches, and other organizations were very active in 
behalf of war prohibition but the movement swept beyond all 
organizations, It was a general demand of patriotism. It was 
estimated that six million separate petitioners asked Congress to 
enact a war prohibition law. This was without a parallel in the 
history of the country. The heads of great business corporations 
and manufacturing plants, leading economists and publicists, 
presidents and student bodies of colleges and universities, great 
mass meetings of citizens and conferences and assemblies of all 
kinds joined in strong and earnest petitions for total war-time 
prohibition. 

There were two distinct efforts, one in 1917 and the other in 
1918. Almost from the beginning of our entrance into the war 
there had been a decided movement for war prohibition. In the 
first two months of the war the subject was discussed in Congress 
several times. In May, 1917, Congress prohibited the sale of 
liquor to soldiers. On June 23 there passed the House of 
Representatives in the Food Control bill a provision forbidding 
the use of any food material in the manufacture of beverage 
liquor. After the bill was in the Senate with a good prospect 
of passing, the liquor interests threatened a filibuster which would 
indefinitely postpone the passage of the whole Food Control bill. 
To prevent this postponement President Wilson, on June 29, sent 
a letter to the Chairman of the Legislative Committee of the Anti- 
Saloon League, asking that the friends of the measure consent 


444 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


to the elimination of the provisions affecting the manufacture of 
beer and wine. The bill was amended in the Senate so as to 
provide only for the prohibition of the manufacture and importa- 
tion of distilled liquors for beverage purposes. This passed and 
went into effect September 8, 1917. The Food Control law also 
authorized the President, at his discretion, to reduce the alcoholic 
content of beer and wine and to limit, regulate or prohibit the use 
of food materials in the manufacture of beer and wine. The 
distilleries were closed, but there was little benefit from a sobriety 
and efficiency standpoint as there were large stocks of whisky in 
the warehouses. The movement for war prohibition seemed to 
have ended in failure. 


WAR PROHIBITION AND THE.~SUBMISSION OF THE EIGHTEENTH 
AMENDMENT 


The tremendous agitation for war prohibition hastened the 
submission by Congress of the Eighteenth Amendment. On 
July 6 and 7, 1917, the war prohibition section of the Food Con- 
trol bill with various amendments was voted upon in the Senate. 
Although prohibiting the further manufacture of whisky, the 
continued making of beer was permitted in accordance with the 
request of the President. But a change of five votes in the 
Senate would have prohibited beer also, with such a prominent 
dry leader as Senator Sheppard of Texas supporting the Presi- 
dent and so voting with the wets. 

It was not until July 21 that the Food Control bill passed the 
Senate. It went back to the House and a partial canvass of that 
body showed that fully half of the members were determined 
to stand by the House action prohibiting beer. The wets were 
thoroughly scared. Several days before the bill passed the Senate, 
Senator Penrose of Pennsylvania, an outstanding wet leader, had 
intimated that the wet leaders were getting ready to consent to a 
vote on the Sheppard resolution submitting the constitutional 
amendment. The wets feared immediate prohibition as a war 
measure and they thought that if the proposed amendment were 
submitted it would tend to satisfy many of the drys and thus 
defer, and perhaps prevent, any kind of prohibition. They knew 
it would take a majority of both houses of thirty-six states to 
ratify the amendment, although a bare majority in one house in 
each of thirteen states could block it. The wets were confident 
they could control a majority of one house in each of thirteen 
states for years to come. 





THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 445 


Furthermore, the wets inserted a clause, which they considered 
a joker, that the proposed amendment would have to be ratified 
within six years or it would be inoperative. This was intro- 
duced by Senator Harding of Ohio, later President, but the news- 
papers at the time reported that it was the current understanding 
in Washington that the provision had been first proposed by a 
liquor attorney. Early in July a representative liquor attorney 
had interviewed a leading dry Senator at length regarding the 
feasibility of a prohibition amendment with a five-year limitation. 
It was a scheme of the wets whereby they thought they would 
turn the attention of the drys away from immediate war pro- 
hibition to the attempt to secure ratification. They thought 
that majority votes of both houses of thirty-six states could not 
be obtained within the time limit and then the liquor traffic would 
remain, while the drys would have to begin all over again the 
difficult process of amending the Constitution. 

Senator Brandegee of Connecticut in his speech during the 
debate referred to the time limit as a trick to defeat the amend- 
ment. Following the passage by the Senate, on August 1, 1917, 
of the resolution for the submission of the amendment with the 
six-year limitation, the liquor lobby was reported to have held a 
jubilation meeting at one of the leading Washington hotels and 
celebrated the success of their device. 

The submission vote by the Senate did succeed in checking the 
movement for war prohibition for a time. The House did not 
vote on the resolution submitting the amendment until December. 
Then a compromise was entered into by which, in return for giv- 
ing the liquor traffic a year before the amendment should go 
into effect, a year was added to the six-year clause, making the 
time limit for ratification seven years. Many thought that the 
proposed amendment could not be ratified even within that 
period. As in the case of the Reed Amendment, the wets greatly 
misjudged the sentiment of the American people and the strength 
of their determination to suppress the liquor traffic. 


THE PASSAGE OF WAR PROHIBITION 


In 1918 renewed efforts were made for war prohibition. In 
April Representative Barkley of Kentucky, introduced a war 
prohibition bill, but it never got out of committee. But in May 
Congressman Randall, always on the alert to advance the cause, 
took advantage of a parliamentary situation and introduced a 
war prohibition provision as an amendment to the Agricultural 


446 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Appropriation bill. Ruled out of order on his first attempt, he 
was ready with another amendment which provided that a pend- 
ing appropriation should not be available unless the President, 
under the power given in the Food Control Act, should issue a 
proclamation for the prohibition of the use of food materials in 
the production of malt and vinous liquors. Congressman Ran- 
dall’s amendment was adopted by the House and it went to the 
Senate. He knew that the more liberal rules of the Senate would 
permit enlargement of the prohibition. His object in attaching 
the provision to a pending bill was to get it before the House 
rather than have it killed in committee. In the Senate the measure 
was perfected and was adopted on August 29, The Agricultural 
bill, to which the war prohibition measure was attached, passed 
the Senate, September 6. On account of disagreement between 
the Senate and the House on other provisions, the bill went to 
conference and was delayed but became a law, November 21, 
1918. 

The act provided for the prohibition of the manufacture of 
beer and wine after May 1, 1919, and for the prohibition of the 
sale of all liquors after June 30, 1919. The period of war pro- 
hibition was to continue until the conclusion of the war and there- 
after until the termination of demobilization. It prohibited the 
importation of all liquors immediately upon the signature of the 
bill by the President. It also empowered the President to estab- 
lish “dry” zones around coal mines, munition plants, shipyards 
and other plants for the production of war material. 


CONGRESSMAN RANDALL'S RECORD 


The service of Congressman Randall, the Prohibition party 
member of Congress, was a source of pride to the Prohibitionists 
of the country. With most Congressmen, even those who favored 
prohibition, this question was a side issue, but Mr. Randall made 
it his dominant issue. He sought every opportunity to advance 
his cause. When others thought there was no hope of securing 
war prohibition, because of the opposition of the all-powerful 
President, Mr. Randall persevered. Mention has already been 
made of his initiative regarding the Anti-Liquor Advertising and 
Bone Dry Law and War Prohibition. He also introduced a bill 
for Prohibition for Hawaii, which afterwards became a law in 
1918. He also introduced several other bills. These included 
bills for the stoppage of the issuance of federa! liquor receipts 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 MAT 


in prohibition territory; the prohibition of the importation, ex- 
portation and interstate shipment of intoxicating liquors; the 
exclusion of liquors from the national parks; bone dry prohibi- 
tion for the District of Columbia, and constitutional prohibition. 
His bills covered most of the constitutional powers of Congress. 


NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITION 


The first conspicuous advocacy of national constitutional pro- 
hibition was in the Prohibition party platform of 1876 which 
advocated an amendment to the National Constitution to make 
prohibition “universal and permanent.’ ® 

On December 12 of the same year, 1876, Congressman Henry 
W. Blair of New Hampshire introduced a proposed amendment 
in the House which would prohibit distilled liquors only, after 
1900. Four years later Senator Plumb of Kansas introduced 
an amendment prohibiting both distilled and fermented liquors. 
In 1887 Mr. Blair, then a Senator, introduced a bill, prepared 
with the cooperation of the heads of the leading temperance 
organizations, including Frances E. Willard, John B. Finch, and 
John N. Stearns, which provided for the prohibition of all 
alcoholic liquors as a beverage. The Senate Committee to which 
it was referred made a favorable report on this on July 9, 1888. 
It reached a vote for the first time in the Senate on March 2, 
1889, and was defeated by a vote of thirty-three to thirteen. 

The next special effort in Congress was not made until Decem- 
ber, 1913, when, after the Anti-Saloon League became com- 
mitted to national constitutional prohibition, practically all the 
other temperance organizations already having been committed 
to that objective, the Hobson resolution for a constitutional 
amendment, drafted by the League leaders, was introduced. On 
December 10, 1913, a Committee of One Thousand, organized 
by the Anti-Saloon League, but including many Prohibitionists, 
together with a similar committee organized by the National 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, each composed of people 
assembled at Washington from all parts of the country, marched 
to the east front of the Capitol and formally presented the pro- 
posed resolution. It was delivered to Senator Sheppard for in- 
troduction into the Senate and to Congressman Hobson for in- 


8 The Eighth National Temperance Convention held at Chicago in June, 187s, 
adopted a resolution in favor of a Constitutional Amendment, but it was not 
especially featured. See Proceedings, p. 67. 


448 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


troduction into the House. The resolution was referred to the 
Judiciary Committee in each chamber. The House Judiciary 
Committee subsequently reported the measure back to the House 
of Representatives without recommendation, thus placing it on the 
calendar. It remained on the House calendar over until the third 
session of the Sixty-third Congress when in December, 1914, 
through the adoption of a special rule presented by the Rules 
Committee it came up as a special order. 

It was voted upon in the House, December 22, 1914, at the 
close of a day’s debate lasting from soon after ten o’clock in the 
morning until eleven-thirty at night and received a majority in 
the House, but not the required two-thirds. The vote was 197 
to 189. The fact that it received a majority served to make it 
an issue in many Congressional districts in the succeeding Con- 
gressional elections of 1916. : 

The wording of the Hobson resolution was decidedly unsatis- 
factory on account of its “for sale’ clauses which limited the 
prohibition of manufacture, importation and transportation to the 
purposes of sale. Had the constitutional amendment passed in 
this form it would have been very difficult to administer. Mean- 
while a Committee of Nineteen, representing the leading temper- 
ance organizations, having been appointed to redraft the amend- 
ment, it was drafted and introduced in 1917 in substantially the 
form as finally adopted with the exception of the seven-year limit 
and the year of grace. 

It should be said that several on the Committee of Nineteen— 
all the party Prohibitionists—desired that the term ‘alcoholic’ 
be incorporated instead of, or in addition to, the term “‘intox1- 
cating.” Had that been used there could have arisen no possible 
doubt as to the construction of the term and the country might 
have been spared the succeeding vociferous wet propaganda which 
sought to modify the Enforcement Act and construe the term 
“intoxicating”? so as to permit beer and wine. 

In 1917 it was introduced in the Senate by Senator Sheppard 
and in the House by Representative Webb. It passed the Senate 
on August I, 1917, by a vote of 65 to 20 and passed the House 
on December 17 by a vote of 282 to 128. Having been amended 
in the House, it repassed the Senate on December 18, 1917. 

Including both houses, the percentage of each major party 
voting for submission was the same, 70 per cent of the Repub- 
licans and 70 per cent of the Democrats, the Prohibition party 
voting 100 per cent for it. 

Submitted to the states on December 22, 1917, it was ratified’ 
on January 16, 1919, and went into effect one year later. The: 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 449 


first state to ratify was Mississippi and the thirty-sixth state was 
Nebraska.® Subsequently ten more ratified, making all the states 
but two, Rhode Island and Connecticut, and in the latter one house 
voted in favor of ratification. The total vote in the Senates of 
the forty-six states was 1,309 to 240—8¥4 per cent for prohibi- 
tion. The total House vote was 3,775 to 1,025—79 per cent for 
prohibition. 

Combining both houses of forty-six states the total vote on 
ratification was 5,084 to 1,265. More than 80 per cent of the 
representatives of the people, more than four to one, voted for 
the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment. Six states ratified 
unanimously, Idaho, Kansas, South Dakota, Utah, Washington 
and Wyoming. 


THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT 


The Eighteenth Amendment reads as follows: 


Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this 
article the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxi- 
cating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or 
the exportation thereof from the United States and all 
territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage 
purposes is hereby prohibited: 

Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall 
have concurrent power to enforce this article by appro- 
priate legislation. 

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it 
shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Con- 
stitution by the Legislatures of the several States, as 
provided in the Constitution, within seven years from 
the date of the submission hereof to the States by the 
Congress. 


The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified by the largest number 
of states, and by the largest percentage of states that ever ratified 
any amendment to the Constitution in the entire history of our 
country, and, with the exception of the Twelfth, Thirteenth and 
Fifteenth Amendments, it was ratified in the shortest length of 
time. 

Prior to the going into effect of the amendment it was esti- 


9A thirty-seventh state, Missouri, ratified the same day, January 16, I919, a 
few minutes after Nebraska. 


450 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


mated that of the total population of the United States which, 
according to the census of 1910, was 91,972,266, there were 
62,763,052, or over 68 per cent living under state prohibition or 
some form of local prohibition, of whom 48,403,537 or nearly 
53 per cent of the whole population were living under state pro- 
hibition.’° Of the 3,042 counties, about 2,624 were dry. ‘That is, 
86 per cent of the counties of the United States were legally dry. 
Of the dry counties, 2,327, or 88 per cent, were in the thirty-three 
prohibition states. In the fifteen non-prohibition states, about 
297 of the 715 counties contained no legal saloons. 

The National Prohibition Act, popularly called the Volstead 
Act, to enforce the Amendment passed Congress in October, 
1919. It was vetoed by President Wilson on October 27, It 
was repassed by the House over his veto the same day by a vote 
of 176 to 55 and the next day the Senate voted to repass it over 
his veto by a vote of 65 to 20. This was probably record time 
for the repassage of a bill over the President’s veto with the 
possible exception of the closing days of a session. 

The Supplemental Prohibition Act was passed in 1921 by a 
vote of 251 to 92 in the House and 56 to 22 in the Senate. 

It would be difficult to discover an important contested measure 
in the whole history of the nation which had such repeated and 
overwhelming support both by the people in direct elections and 
by the representatives of the people in legislative bodies as did 
prohibition.” 

War prohibition making the sale of liquor illegal went into 
effect July 1, 1919. The more permanent constitutional pro- 
hibition went into effect January 16, 1920. There had thus been 
fulfilled the prophecy implied in the slogan adopted by the Chris- 
tian Endeavor Convention of 1911 which had set as the goal: 
“A saloonless Nation by 1920, the three-hundredth anniversary 
of the landing of the Pilgrims.” 

January 16, 1920, was the occasion of celebrations in many 
parts of the country. At Washington, D. C., the members of 
the National Temperance Council and the National Legislative 
Conference were meeting in annual session and as the moment 
approached for national constitutional prohibition to go into 
effect, William Jennings Bryan, who as President of the National 
Dry Federation had visited many legislatures in the interest of 
ratification and had rendered splendid service for the cause, 


10 Anti-Saloon League Year Book, 1920, pp. 128-132. 


11 Some of the argument for national constitutional prohibition is presented in 
Chapter XXVIII. 


— 


THE PROGRESS OF PROHIBITION, 1914-1919 451 


quoted the passage of Scripture in the twentieth verse of the 
second chapter of Matthew and based his address upon: “For 
they are dead which sought the young child’s life.” 


RATIFICATION OF THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT BY THE SEVERAL STATES 


Order States Senate Vote House Vote 

(7) Massissippies\.... { Jan. 8, 1918, 28 to 5 Jan. SATO18, os tani 
(2) Virgie fey 57.4 Jan. I0, 1918, 30 to 8 Jan. 11, 1918, 84 to 13 
(4) Keemtuemvar eet) Jan. (14) 1018, 28 to” 6) Jan. 14! 1918, 66 to 10 
(4) South Carolina .. Jan. 18, 1918, 28 to 6 Jan. 28, 1918, 66 to 29 
(5) North Dakota .... Jan. 25, 1918, 43 to 2 Jan. 25, 1918 96 to 10 
(6) Maryann, 7 r30. 7! Feb. 13, 1918, 18 to 7° °Feb. 8, 1918, 58 to 36 
(7) Mentahaw ts vc as. Feb. “oso 35. to: “2)'} Beh. IG IOIGN Ar ton, o 
(3)/d axa seeker). <, , Feb. 28, 1918, 15 to 7 ,Mar. 4) MOLSC 87216 30 
(9) Delaware. 0. Mar. 18, 1918, 13 to 3. Mar. LAIO1S, «27 tov .6 
(10) South Dakota .... Mar. 19, 1918, 43 to 0 Mar. 20, 1918 86 to o 
(11) Massachusetts .... Apr. 2, 1918, 27 to 12 Mar. 26, 1918, 145 to oI 
Cio): Arizqganis visccriaes May 23, 1918, 17 to o May 24, 1918, 29 to 3 
(13): Géorwia Th ees, June 26, 1918, 34 to 2 June 26, 1918, 129 to 24 
(14) ) Louisiana’ Wee ei): Aug. 6, 1918, 21 to 20 Aug). SV IO1G, 4 00; t01, 4 i 
CLS) ab eric pee en. . Novi '27,,1018,) 25) to 20 Noy. 27, 1018, 61 to") Ws 
CIO) Uae eran Cg Jan. 2, I919, 30 to O Jan. 2p LOT pu. oud, £3 
Be LO a Sie dae Jan. 7, I919, 20 to 12. Jan. 7, 1919, 85 to 30 
CIS Papianodia’ ye Jan. 7, 1919, 43 to Oo Jan. ¥7, I9QI9, 90 to 8 
CTO) eiponnetey i. Fe. a: Jan. ;»8, I910; 20:to.“.0 Jan; 8), 1919, 122-to" 20 
efap ef ier i ae Janu 8. TOIO..38hto.- 0. Jan, Zo TOLG gs OZ) Our * O 
(21) West Virginia ... Jan. 9, MOTO ty Oe pas WO) LOG 7st ee 
(22)) Washinoton me soat Jan. 13, 1910, 42 to Oo Jan. £3,/1O0T0 "03° to 60 
(23) "Tennessee: . 5. . 6 o6 Jan 59,(1010,.28 to. 2. Jan: TS LO LO Wroemtacene 
(24) sCalitornias) be." Jan. 10, 1919, 24 to 15 Jan. 13, 1919, -48 to 28 
(25) ceodiana yy, se Foote Jam Vi3;) 1019, 41 to (6° Jan!” ‘14. DOIO I. S7).tO. TI 
RO UbinOis pater ices ys! Jan. 8, 1919, 30 to 15 Jan. 14, 1919, 84 to 66 
(27) Arkansas snag ale Jan. 14, 1919, 34 to oO Jan.) 03), LOT, arto ie 
(28) North Carolina ... Jan. 10, 1910, 49 to O Jan. 14, 1910, 93 to 10 
Cao Alabama (aie Jatt WAAR OIG, .23to; 11) Tan. TAR 1OIO) GAl to: 34 
Moy cdnsas sor. 26). Jan. 14, 1919, 39 to oO Jan. T4e4 1OLOC 12 to. 160 
Snorecom. yo Jan TssroTo. 30" to. Vale Wa iTO1o, Mt eRita oa 
PASO NLOW A sui eee fx, | Jan. 15, 1919, 42 to 7 JAMMOTS? 10I0/"86.to #13 
C23 Uta wits. Jan." 15,'T010!} 16 too Jan. 14, 1919, 43 to 0 
(34) Colorado ah thie. Jan?) Ueteronon34 to. 1 Janel S, TOTO 68 tone 
(35) New Hampshire .. Jan. PIs 1929719 to. .4 Jane 5, 1910, 221 to 131 
(56s Nebrasiays. 2) 08%). Jan. 13, 1919, 31 to I Jan. 16, I919, 98 to oO 
(37) Missouri cere side) Jan. 16, 1919, 22 to Io Jan. 16, 1919, 104 to 36 
(38) Wyoming ........ Jan. 16, 1919, 26 to Oo Jan. LO. TOLO Nias? to war 
(39). Wisconsin» . 2.) ©) Jan. 16, I919, 19 to II Jaa. 17, OO. Jeortoless 
(40) Marmiesotail)’. <1 31. Jan. 16, 1919, 48 to 11 Jan. ry, IQ19,' G2 to’ 36 
(41) New Mexico ..... Jan. 20, 1919, 12 to 4 Jani,(16,, 101d, Was ito: ht 
(Az) *Nevadais so 7 0:'.: Jan. (20 MOLO ATA tO >I Jan. 20.1910,)-a3nte .03 
C23 Fe Vermonty yey 2 Jan. 16, 1919, 26 to 3 Jan." 20, FoTO Tse tay .58 
(44) New Laid a a Jan. 20, 1919, 27 to 24 Jan. 23, I919, 81 to 66 
(45) Pennsylvania ..... Feb. 25, 1919, 290 to 16 Feb. A xLG190," TIO. to. “93 
(49) New Jersey 2: )... Mar. 9, 1922, 12to 4 Mar. Fs 1Oeee we Ss, tO 724 


Chapter X XIV 
THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 


During the movement for war prohibition in 1917 and 1918 
the Prohibition party was in the forefront of activity in its 
behalf, many Prohibitionists believing that from the standpoint 
of patriotism no greater service, outside the battlefield itself, 
could be performed than in overcoming the greatest enemy at 
home. | 

A summary by National Chairman Hinshaw in December, 
1918, included the following among the activities of the Pro- 
hibition National Committee that year: 


Initiated and successfully carried out one of the most intensive, 
effective and practical campaign programs ever undertaken in be- 
half of Prohibition, including: 

I. Secured endorsement of war prohibition by city councils, 
boards of trade, chambers of commerce and other commercial 
bodies. 

2. Inaugurated a chain of telegrams to Congress from church, 
women’s and many patriotic organizations demanding war _pro- 
hibition. 

3. Conducted a newspaper advertising campaign. 

4. Reached labor unions and laboring men for war prohibition 
through Unionist speakers. 

5. Enlisted fraternal orders in Amendment fight. 

6. Arranged auto tours and a series of public meetings during 
recent fall campaigns. 

7-_ Sent special state editions of the Prohibition national organ, 
the Patriot Phalanx, into over one million homes in twelve states 
where ratification or statewide campaigns were on. 

8. Returned to Congress Charles H. Randall. 

9. Actually “adjourned politics” and worked in every state with- 
out regard to party to elect dry legislatures. 

10. Worked hard for ratification. 

11. Entered upon a campaign for worldwide Prohibition. 


In addition Prohibitionists under the leadership of National 
Chairman Hinshaw and Dr. Charles Scanlon of the Presbyterian 


Temperance Board were largely instrumental in forming in 1918 
452 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 453 


the National Dry Federation in which the more advanced temper- 
ance and prohibition organizations and church temperance boards 
cooperated for the promotion of war prohibition and the rati- 
fication of the Amendment. Its president was William Jennings 
Bryan who addressed a number of the state legislatures and many 
large public meetings in behalf of ratification, 

In the war period the various temperance and prohibition 
groups cooperated in forming the United Committee for War 
Temperance Activities in the Army and Navy. This Committee 
carried on a large educational prograin against drink among the 
soldiers and sailors. 

By means of lectures, literature, posters, slides and stereomotor- 
graphs it presented to the soldiers and sailors the efficiency facts 
regarding the use of intoxicants, furthered a sympathetic under- 
standing of the reasons for the military regulations against drink, 
and fortified them to meet the temptations of military life, warn- 
ing them particularly of the dangers of wine. 

After America had adopted constitutional prohibition it pre- 
sented some of the economic and industrial facts underlying the 
reasons for prohibition, counteracted propaganda against the > 
Constitution and helped many to return to civil life better citizens, 
proud of the fact that the United States had placed prohibition 
in its Constitution. 

The work of the United Committee was semi-official, having 
been done with the approbation of the War Department. 

Its chairman was Daniel A. Poling and its first executive secre- 
tary was Harley H. Gill. 


THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 


In September, 1919, the Prohibition party celebrated its fiftieth 
anniversary at a national gathering in Chicago near the site of 
Farwell Hall, the Y.M.C.A, building, where it had been organized 
in 1869. 

At this gathering the predominant sentiment was that of con- 
gratulation and jubilation that the fifty-year struggle had been 
crowned by the ratification of the National Prohibition Amend- 
ment which had been accomplished the preceding January. 

Since early in its history the Prohibition party had been com- 
mitted to a national prohibition constitutional amendment. It 
had been a pioneer in the advocacy of constitutional prohibition. 


1See Anti-Alcohol Activities Among American Soldiers and Sailors During 
the War, Final Report of the United Committee, 1920, 28 pp. 


454 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The platforms of 1876, 1880, 1884, 1888, 1908, and 1916 had 
mentioned a constitutional amendment specifically. As no other 
organization, the Prohibition party had been the loyal, faithful, 
persistent, indefatigable, never-say-die champion of National Pro- 
hibition which had now been established in the Constitution of 
the United States. 

The Prohibitionists had good reasons for congratulations on 
their fiftieth anniversary. The Prohibition party had a record 
of having been the longest-lived minority party in the history of 
the country. 

For fifty years it had been the perennial advocate of national 
prohibition; for fifty years it had carried on the fight against 
license and against every form of liquor perpetuation; for fifty 
years it had stood against compromises of every kind; for fifty 
years it had declared that law should uphold the right, prohibit 
the wrong and reflect the best; for fifty years it had proclaimed 
the gospel of national righteousness, that “righteousness exalteth 
a nation’; for fifty years it had held aloft a great national ideal 
and had maintained a vision of a greater and better nation; for 
fifty years it had advocated a higher standard of politics and a 
realignment through which the better elements of our citizenship 
might prevail; for fifty years it had exalted conscience in politics, 
had emphasized the citizen’s responsibility for the use of the 
ballot; for fifty years it had taught that voting is a part of 
conduct and that one’s ballot should express one’s convictions, 
aspirations and desires with respect to public affairs; for fifty 
years its members had gone to the polls every election day and 
“thrown away” their votes for a great principle, “planted” them, 
as John Russell used to say, in faith that they would spring forth, 
grow and bring to fruition a nation redeemed from the crime and 
curse of the legalized liquor traffic. 

Now the liquor traffic was no longer licensed or legalized. It 
was an outlaw and a criminal, a violator of the Constitution of 
the nation. All the force of law, all the supreme authority of 
organized society was arrayed against the arch enemy of the 
race, 

To have amended the Constitution and embedded in that instru- 
ment the principle of prohibition was a tremendous achievement ; 
an achievement of so great magnitude as to reflect plenteous credit 
on all the various groups which had a part in bringing it about. 

At the anniversary meeting, although the predominant spirit 
was that of congratulation, there was a recognition that the work 
was by no means finished, that the objectives of the Party were 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 455 


still far from being reached. It was realized that prohibition had 
not come by a method which would presage effective adminis- 
tration. It was foreseen that enforcement entrusted to the old 
parties would not work out satisfactorily. 

The Prohibitionists realized as perhaps few others that the 
non-partisan adoption of a constitutional amendment was by no 
means the “final step” in the solution of the liquor problem as had 
been asserted by some of the leaders of the Anti-Saloon League. 

Obtaining the law was a step, and an important one, but it was 
only a step. Ahead stretched the more difficult task—the admin- 
istration of the law. 

In the minds of the Prohibitionists a party in power committed 
to prohibition as a party principle was essential to effective pro- 
hibition. They had always purposed, as expressed in the plat- 
form of 1888, that an amendment should be “enforced by ade- 
quate laws adequately supported by administrative authority.” 
Long experience had demonstrated the inadequacy of enacting 
prohibitory laws, constitutional or statutory, without a party in 
power to administer them. An amendment without a party sup- 
porting it to vitalize it was like a locomotive without steam, like 
an ax without a man to wield it. 


Said Dr. Daniel A. Poling, in 1914: 


It would be a monumental tragedy to achieve national prohibition 
by an amendment to the Constitution of the United States without 
capturing for the administration of that law the executive depart- 
ment of the government. 


Notwithstanding that the Prohibitionists recognized the inade- 
quacy of a mere amendment most of them had joined earnestly 
in the general movement for the Eighteenth Amendment and had 
toiled hard in developing sentiment in its behalf. Some had 
thought that the struggle to secure the Amendment would reach 
such intensity that the foes of the liquor traffic would be com- 
pelled to unite in a political army to rout the enemy. But asa 
consequence of the Congressional situation created by the move- 
ment for war prohibition and as a result of the exalted patriotic 
fervor of the war period the Amendment was adopted sooner than 
had been anticipated. There was no political union of the dry 
forces. The preexisting partisan alignments continued. Parties 
which had always sought the votes of two diverse elements, the 
wets and the drys, and both of which were comprised of both 
elements, remained in power. 

Notwithstanding this many Prohibitionists hoped for the best. 


456 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


It was naturally assumed by most people that after a measure 
had been placed in the Constitution by such an overwhelming ma- 
jority of the representatives of the people, after the sovereign 
power of the nation had spoken, sheer respect for the Constitution 
would cause acceptance of and committal to a principle of the 
Constitution by all parties. 

So general was this assumption that the leaders of several of 
the temperance and prohibition organizations almost immediately 
turned their attention to extending the principle of prohibition 
around the world. Some of the party leaders organized the Pro- 
hibition Foundation whose purpose was primarily to raise and 
administer funds for world work somewhat similar to the Pro- 
hibition Trust Fund Association which had been organized in 
1890 to receive and administer gifts and bequests for prohibition 
work in this country and which still continues to function. 

Several of the leading workers were sent to foreign fields. Mr. 
Chafin, and later Mr. Calderwood, was sent to Australia. Mr. 
Hinshaw, Mr. Hohenthal and others went to Europe. Simi- 
larly, other organizations became imbued with the missionary 
spirit to bring about world prohibition. 

But there was a rude awakening at home. Neither the liquor 
element nor the wet politicians paid any more respect to the 
Constitution of the United States than they did to a state con- 
stitution or a statutory law which they wished to disregard. 
Furthermore, after the law was violated it was only rarely that 
adequate penalties were applied. It was found that an astonishing 
proportion of wet men had been appointed to enforce dry laws. 
Still worse, it was found that men in positions of high responsi- 
bility relating to the administration of the law were men with 
notoriously wet records. In short it was found that the govern- 
ment was not functioning except to a very limited extent. 

The remarkable victory achieved in placing prohibition in the 
Constitution had been merely partial. Prohibition had won on 
the constitutional law side of government, it had not yet won on 
the politics side of government. It had not obtained control of 
the agencies by which the Constitution is put into operation. 

The people had wrought a revolution in placing prohibition 
in the Constitution. But there had been no revolution in politics. 
The old political régime continued. The existing dominant 
parties were no more committed to an aggressive policy of en- 
forcing the Eighteenth Amendment than they were to an aggres- 
sive policy relating to that part of the Fourteenth Amendment 
which relates to the reduction of representation in Congress. _ 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 457 


Prior to the national conventions of 1920 there was a wide- 
spread movement to get both major parties to adopt planks com- 
mitting those parties to the maintenance and enforcement of 
prohibition. The Prohibition party showed its self-effacing in- 
terest in getting each of the larger parties to adopt a dry plank 
by spending thousands of dollars and sending out 252,000 letters 
to leaders of organizations of all kinds asking them to bring 
influence to bear upon the national conventions to adopt such 
planks. It was estimated that groups representing constituencies 
of more than 20,000,000 people requested platform declarations 
in support of prohibition. 

The Republican Committee on Resolutions voted against men- 
tioning the subject in the platform, only three members voting 
favorably. Finally the Kansas member agreed to sign a resolu- 
tion in the form of a minority report but would not agree to 
present it to the convention. He offered to give his proxy to the 
Governor of Kansas or any other dry leader who would intro- 
duce it and make the fight. The Governor of Kansas declined 
on the ground it might hurt the chances of the man he was going 
to nominate for President. No one else was found willing to 
present the minority dry report and make the fight. 

At the Democratic convention although a dry plank was cham-. 
pioned by William Jennings Bryan no better result was achieved. 
Thus the splendid effort to commit the major parties to the new 
moral provision of the Constitution met with ignominious defeat. 
The nominations were in harmony with the platforms. The 
decidedly unsatisfactory record of the Republican nominee for 
President was described in Chapter X XI. 

On the Democratic side the candidate was regarded as so 
associated with wet interests that there occurred one of the most 
astounding situations in the history of presidential elections. 
William Jennings Bryan, himself three times the Democratic 
nominee for President, warned the country to prepare for the 
impeachment of the incoming President for failure to enforce 
the Constitution. 

In this situation there was nothing for the Prohibition party 
to do but to again raise aloft the standard and continue the fight 
for prohibition in administration as well as in law. 


THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF I920 


The National Convention was held at Lincoln, Nebraska, July 
21 and 22. Aaron S. Watkins was Temporary Chairman, and 


458 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Miss Marie C. Brehm, of California, Permanent Chairman. 
This was the first time that a woman was ever elected to that 
position in any national political convention. In addition a 
woman, Mrs. Ida B. Wise Smith, of Iowa, was elected Vice- 
Chairman of the National Committee, the first time a woman was 
ever thus honored. E. L. G. Hohenthal of Connecticut was 
Secretary of the Convention, with Miss Minnette Murphy of 
Iowa as assistant. 

Striking platform planks included a condemnation of nullifica- 
tion and a pertinent one relating to presidential qualifications. 


THE PLATFORM OF 1920 


The Prohibition party assembled in National Convention in the 
city of Lincoln, Nebraska, on this twenty-second day of July, 1920, 
expresses its thanks to Almighty God for the victory over the 
beverage liquor traffic which crowns fifty years of consecrated ef- 
fort. The principles which we have advocated throughout our 
history have been so far recognized that the manufacture and traf- 
fic in intoxicating drink have been forever prohibited in the fun- 
damental law of the land; Congress has rightly interpreted the 
Eighteenth Amendment in laws enacted for its enforcement; and 
the Supreme Court has upheld both the Amendment and the law. 

Asking that it be clothed with governmental power, the Prohibi- 
tion party challenges the attention of the nation and requests the 
votes of the people on this Declaration of Principles. 


Nullification Condemned 


The organized liquor traffic is engaged in a treasonable attempt 
to nullify the Amendment by such modification of the Enforcement 
Act as will increase the alcoholic content in beer and wine and thus 
thwart the will of the people as constitutionally expressed. 

In the face of this open threat the Republican and Democratic 
parties refused to make platform declarations in favor of law en- 
forcement, though petitioned so to do by multitudes of people. Thus 
the Prohibition party remains the sole political champion of Na- 
tional Prohibition. 

The Prohibition party in its platform in 1872 declared: ‘There 
can be no greater peril to the nation than the existing party com- 
petition for the liquor vote; any party not openly opposed to the 
traffic, experience shows, will engage in this competition, will court 
the favor of the criminal classes, will barter away the public morals, 
the purity of the ballot, and every object of good government for 
party success.” Notwithstanding the liquor traffic is now out- 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 459 


lawed by the Constitution this fitly describes the present political 
attitude of the old parties. The issue is not only the enforcement 
but also the maintenance of the law to make the Amendment ef- 
fective. 

The proposed increase in the alcoholic content of beverages would 
be fraught with grave danger in that it would mean the return of 
the open saloon with all its attendant evils. 


The League of Nations 


The League of Nations is now in existence and is functioning 
in world affairs. We favor the entrance of the United States into 
the League by the immediate ratification of the treaty of peace, 
not objecting to reasonable reservations interpreting American 
understanding of the covenant. The time is past when the United 
States can hold aloof from the affairs of the world. Such a course 
is short-sighted and only invites disaster. 


Peace 


We stand for a constitutional amendment providing that treaties 
of peace shall be ratified by a majority of both Houses of Congress. 

We stand by our declaration of 1916 against militarism and uni- 
versal military training. Without it our boys were in a short 
time trained to whip the greatest army ever assembled and with 
national prohibition to make sure the most virile manhood in the 
world we should encourage universal disarmament and devotion 
to the arts of peace. 


Education 


We stand for compulsory education with instruction in the Eng- 
lish language, which, if given in private or parochial schools must 
be equivalent to that afforded by the public schools, and be under 
state supervision. 


Suffrage 


The Prohibition party has long advocated the enfranchisement 
of women. Suffrage should not be conditioned upon sex. We 
congratulate the women upon the freedom which the Party has 
helped them to achieve. 


Woman and the Home 


We approve and adopt the program of the National League of 
Women Voters providing for: 


460 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The prohibition of child labor ; 

Adequate appropriation for the Children’s Bureau ; 

Protection for infant life through a Federal program for maternity 
and infancy care; 

A Federal department of education, Federal aid for the removal 
of illiteracy and the increase of teachers’ salaries ; 

Instruction of the youth and the newcomer to our shores in the 
duties and ideals of citizenship. 

Vocational training in home economics ; 

Federal supervision of the marketing and distribution of food, the 
enactment and enforcement of such measures as will open the 
channels of trade, prevent excess profits, and eliminate unfair 
competition and control of the necessities of life. 

The establishment of a Woman’s Bureau in the Department of 
Labor to determine standards and policies which will improve work- 
ing conditions for women and increase their efficiency ; 

The appointment of women in the mediation and conciliation serv- 
ice and on any industrial commissions and tribunals which may be 
created ; 

The establishment of a ioint Federal and State employment service 
with women’s departments under the direction of qualified women ; 
The merit system in the civil service free from discrimination on 
account of sex with a wage scale determined by skill demanded for 
the work and in no wise below the cost of living as established by 
official investigation ; 

Appropriation to carry on a campaign against venereal diseases and 
for public education in sex hygiene; 

Federal legislation permitting an American born woman to retain 
her citizenship while resident in the United States, though married 
to an alien; 

And further, that an alien woman who marries an American citizen 
must take the obligation of citizenship before she can become a 
citizen. 


Economy in Administration 


We believe in the budget system and we stand for economy in 
governmental administration. There should be a reduction in 
boards, committees, commissions and offices which consume taxes 
and increase expenses. 


Labor and Industry 


We stand for Industrial Peace. We believe the time has come 
for the government to assume responsibility for the protection of 
the public against the waste and terror of industrial warfare, and 
to that.end we demand legislation defining the rights of labor and 


es ee ee ee 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 461 


the creation of industrial courts, which will guarantee to labor and 
employing capital equal and exact justice, and to the general public 
protection against the paralysis of industry due to this warfare. 


Profiteering 


The Prohibition party pledges the nation to rid it of the profiteer 
and to close the door against his return. It will endeavor to eli- 
minate all unnecessary middlemen by the encouragement of or- 
ganizations among producers that will bring those who sell and 
those who use nearer together. It will enact and enforce laws 
needful to effectively prevent excessive charges by such middlemen. 
To this end it will demand legislation subjecting to the penalties of 
the criminal law all corporate officers and employees who give 
or carry out instructions that result in extortion; it will make it 
unlawful for any one engaged in Interstate Commerce to make the 
sale of one article dependent upon the purchase of another article 
and it will require such corporation to disclose to customers the 
difference between cost price and selling price or limit the profit 
that can be legally charged as the rate of interest is now limited. 


Agriculture 


We pledge our aid to the farmer in working out a plan to equal- 
ize prices, to secure labor, and to organize a system of cooperative 
marketing, including public terminals, mills and storage for the 
purpose of encouraging agriculture and securing for the farmer 
such return as will tend to increased production. 

We favor such extension of the parcel post as will further facili- 
tate the direct traffic between the producer and consumer. 


Presidential Qualifications 


. The qualifications for President stated in the Constitution have 
to do with age and citizenship. We call attention to the fact that 
of greater importance are those not so stated referring to moral, 
intellectual and spiritual endowments. The President of the United 
States in his daily life, his home and family relationships and in 
his official career, is expected to typify the finest and best the coun- 
try can produce. He is the leader of the nation. The moral force 
and power of his example are immeasurable. No man or woman 
should ever be elected to the high office who is out of harmony 
with the purposes of the people or who lacks sympathy with their 
highest and holiest ideals, and with the Christian principles upon 
which the nation was founded. 


462 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Law and Order 


A crying evil of the day is the general lax enforcement of law. 
Without obedience to law and maintenance of order our American 
institutions must perish. 

The Prohibition party now, as ever, pledges impartial enforcement 
of all law. 


Conclusion 


In this national and world crisis the Prohibition party reminds 
the people of its long-time faithfulness and its wisdom, proved by 
the many reforms which it was the first to advocate; and on its 
record as the oldest minority party—one which has never sold its 
birthright for a mess of pottage but throughout the years has stood 
for the best interests of the country—it asks the favorable con- 
sideration of the voters, believing that by its support they can make 
it necessary for all political organizations to come up to a higher 
level and to render a finer quality of service. 

It pledges itself resolutely to stand for the right and oppose the 
wrong and dauntlessly to lead in the advocacy of righteous and 
patriotic principles. On its record and on this Declaration of Prin- 
ciples it submits its case to the American people. 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. Aaron S. Watkins, of Ohio, was nominated. 
He had been twice the candidate for Vice-President, in 1908 and 
1912. A sketch of his life was given in the chapter covering 
those campaigns. He had served the cause with such signal 
ability through his platform work all over the country that his 
nomination for President was regarded as a well merited 
promotion. 

For Vice-President. D. Leigh Colvin, of New York, was 
nominated, The following is from a sketch published during 
the campaign: 


Born at South Charleston, Ohio, January 28, 1880. Few men 
have had.an education so definitely directed towards national pub- 
lic service as Dr. Colvin. His senior preparatory year was spent 
at the American Temperance University, Harriman, Tennessee. 
After having been graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 
1900, he spent five years in postgraduate study in the three largest 
universities in America, the University of California, the Univer- 
sity of Chicago, and Columbia University. He received the degree 
of Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia. His field of study was 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 463 


all in those subjects relating to government, politics and the public 
problems of our time. His studies included courses in political 
science, economics, history, constitutional, international and ad- 
ministrative law, sociology, statistics and political philosophy. 

He served for sixteen years as National President of the Inter- 
collegiate Prohibition Association which under his presidency be- 
came by far the largest student organization of a civic character in 
the history of the country. 

No candidate of any party has a better knowledge of all parts 
of our country than the Prohibition Vice-Presidential candidate. 
For the greater part of the time for twenty years he has traveled 
from Coast to Coast, having spoken in more than three hundred and 
fifty colleges and universities, in many of them repeatedly. He 
knows the spirit of America. 

He is the author of The Bicameral Principle in the New York 
Legislature, a study of actual government in the Legislature of 
New York. He has also written several authoritative studies of the 
prohibition question. 

In his prohibition service Dr. Colvin has been not only at the 
head of the college movement but he has been also Vice-President 
of the National Temperance Council; Secretary of the Committee 
of Sixty; Secretary of the National Legislative Conference, com- 
posed of official representatives of all the important national tem- 
perance and prohibition organizations; Treasurer of the United 
Committee on War Temperance Activities in the Army and Navy; 
Director of the World Prohibition Federation and of the Interna- 
tional Reform Bureau. In 1916 he was Executive Secretary of 
the Prohibition National Campaign Ccismittee. He has taken a 
leading part in securing fuller cooperation among the various anti- 
liquor organizations. He was Prohibition nominee for the United 
States Senate from New York in 1916 and for Mayor of New York 
yin LOL: 

In 1918 he served as a Captain in the United States Army. In 
1919 he visited about half of the universities of France, England, 
Scotland and Belgium in the interest of world prohibition. 


In the campaign both candidates made extensive speaking tours 
reaching from Coast to Coast. Owing to the disintegration of 
the party organization, the ticket was on the ballot in only twenty- 
five states. Many people thought they had to vote for the less wet 
of the two major party candidates in order to keep the wetter 
one out of the Presidency. 

Interesting features of the election were the splendid votes for 
United States Senator received by two women, who were the 
Prohibition candidates in their respective states. Mrs. Ella A. 


464 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Boole in New York polled 159,477 votes, and Mrs. Leah Cobb 
Marion in Pennsylvania polled 132,610. 


THE CAMPAIGN OF 1924 


Because of the intolerable situation in relation to adminis- 
tration, the very function preeminently stressed by the Prohibition 
party throughout its history, the Prohibitionists, although badly 
disorganized, determined they could not do otherwise than con- 
tinue the battle for prohibition administration. 

Only a few, however, as yet discerned the real situation and 
those were largely the ones who were both grounded in the Pro- 
hibition party philosophy and well posted on current events. 

The convention of 1924 was held at Columbus, Ohio, where 
the first nominating convention had been held fifty-two years 
before. It was held June 5 and 6, before the conventions of 
the other parties which many regarded as a mistake from a tactical 
standpoint, although there was nothing which ‘transpired at the 
other conventions to lessen the need of the Prohibition party. 

Mr. H. P. Faris, of Missouri, was Chairman of the convention 
and Mr. William F. Varney, of New York, Secretary. 

There were a few present who were opposed to the party con- 
tinuing, not because there was not, as their leading spokesman 
said, great need of a party but because under the existing condi- 
tions the Prohibition party was not able to perform the great work 
of amalgamating the millions of voters who desired proper en- 
forcement of law. However, most of those present, seeing no 
prospect of any other party arising, went ahead and adopted a 
platform and made nominations. 


PLATFORM OF 1924 
The Prohibition Party in National Convention at Columbus, Ohio, 
this sixth day of June, 1924, recognizing Almighty God as the source 
of all governmental authority and that the principles enunciated by 
His Son, Jesus Christ, should guide in all matters pertaining to 
government, makes the following declaration of principles: 


Our Party and Its Philosophy 

Four years of nullification of the Eighteenth Amendment by the 
Democratic and Republican officials have demonstrated the sound- 
ness of the philosophy of the Prohibition party that a law con- 
ferring a right will enforce itself, but a law prohibiting a wrong, 
financially and politically entrenched, requires a party thoroughly 
committed to its maintenance and enforcement. Little or no im- 
provement can be expected so long as the friends of the prohibitory 
law divide themselves among political parties seeking the votes of 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 465 


the law violators and the nullificationists, which votes are regarded 
to be as necessary to the success of those political parties as are the 
votes of the law-abiders. 

The astounding revelations of corruption and maladministration 
in government, extending to the Cabinet itself, are but the inevitable 
consequences of the moral bankruptcy of a political party which, 
perpetuating the old liquor régime, is dependent upon the wet vote 
for its margin of plurality. 


International Relations 

The time is past when the United States can hold aloof from the 
affairs of the World. We support the proposal for the entry of 
this country into the Court of International Justice, as an important 
step for substituting law for force in the settlement of international 
disputes. 

Labor, Capital and the General Public 

While adhering to our time-honored position of demanding justice 
for both Labor and Capital, we declare that the interests of the 
general public are paramount to both. Therefore, we favor the 
speedy enactment by Congress and the several state Legislatures, 
each in its respective jurisdiction, of such legislation as shall im- 
partially protect all three of these classes. 


Agriculture 


In the constantly increasing trend of population from the country 
into the towns and cities, with the constant abandonment of the 
farms, this country faces a grave peril. It is self-evident that the 
farmer, with his investment in his lands, buildings, live-stock, 
machinery, tools, and labor, ought to receive more than one-half of 
the dollar paid by the consumer for the products of the farm, where 
no process of manufacture intervenes. If given power, we will by 
appropriate legislation endeavor to secure to the farmer his just 
share of the proceeds of his toil. 


Conservation 

All natural resources, including mineral, oil, and timber lands, 
water powers and other wealth still remaining to the United States 
after the wasteful and profligate administration of corrupt old party 
officials should be held perpetually and operated to produce revenue 
for the use of the Government. They must not be ruthlessly 
squandered by men or corporations for their own enrichment, nor 
must they become the collateral of political parties for promissory 
notes issued for value received. 


Unjust Ballot Laws 


We denounce the enactment by the Republican and Democratic 
parties in many states of unjust and discriminatory election laws, 


4.66 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


that make it almost, and in some states entirely impossible for minor 
parties to retain their place on the official ballot, or for new parties 
to be formed, and we demand their repeal. 


The Bible in the Schools 


The Bible is the Magna Charta of human liberty and national 
safety and is of highest educational value. Therefore it should 
have large place in our public schools. 

Americanization of Aliens 

Recognizing the fact that there are large numbers of unassimilated 
aliens now in this country who, in their present condition and en- 
vironment, are incapable of assimilation, and are therefore a menace 
to our institutions, we declare for an immediate, scientific investi- 
gation, looking forward to a constructive program for American- 
izing these aliens. 


Separation of Departments of Government 


We deplore the prevailing disregard by the parties in power of 
the Constitutional division of governmental powers into Legislative, 
Executive, and Judicial branches, and when placed in authority we 
pledge strict observance of such division. 


Woman and the Home 

We approve and adopt the program of the National League of 
Women Voters for public welfare in government in so far as a 
strict regard for the division of powers under our dual form of 
government will permit. 

Civil Service 

We favor the extension of the merit system to all the agencies 

of the Executive branch of our government. 


Free Institutions 


We favor freedom of speech, a free press, our free public school 
system, and compulsory attendance in our public schools. We are 
unalterably opposed to public monies being used for sectarian pur- 
poses. We favor keeping open to public inspection all places where 
public wards are cared for. 

Conclusion 

On this record of principles, and on its record of long-time faith- 
fulness and vision, proved by the many reforms which it was the 
first to advocate, the National Prohibition Party summons all those 
who favor suppression of the liquor traffic, the enforcement of 
law, the maintenance of constitutional government, the purification 
of our politics, honesty and efficiency in administration, and the 
building of a better citizenship, to join with us in a new alignment 
in a political party to achieve these transcendent objectives. 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 467 


THE NOMINEES 


For President. Herman P. Faris, of Missouri, was nominated 
for President. He was a man with a long record of devoted 
service to the cause of prohibition. He had been three times can- 
didate for Governor of Missouri and for twenty-four years had 
been a member of the Prohibition National Committee, having 
served twelve as its Treasurer. He was an indefatigable and 
aggressive worker for prohibition. In 1916 almost single-handed 
he inaugurated a prohibition campaign in Missouri even against 
the opposition of more conservative organizations. The state 
outside of St. Louis rolled up a majority for prohibition, Kan- 
sas City voting for prohibition. He had spoken for prohibition 
in many states. Mr. Faris was a well-known banker and an 
active layman in the Presbyterian church, having been several 
times a commissioner to the General Assembly of that church. 
In his address as temporary chairman of the convention he 
emphasized putting religion into politics. 

For Vice-President. For the first time in the history of the 
regular political parties a woman was nominated on the national 
ticket. Miss Marie C. Brehm, of California, was nominated for 
Vice-President. She, like Mr. Faris, had given a lifetime of 
service to the prohibition cause. Both Mr. Faris and Miss Brehm 
had been born in Ohio, As a young woman Miss Brehm be- 
came identified with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. 
Miss Willard made her national superintendent of the Franchise 
Department of the national Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union. She served as state president of the Equal Suffrage 
Association of Illinois and for some years as state president of 
the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of that state. She 
was twice appointed by the President as a representative of the 
United States at the International Anti-Alcohol Congresses held 
in Europe. 

She possessed very superior intellectual endowment. She was 
a woman of dignity, ability and an exceptionally able parlia- 
mentarian. She would have made a very distinguished presid- 
ing officer of the United States Senate. 

At the meeting of the National Committee Dr. B. E. P. Prugh, 
of Pennsylvania, was chosen National Chairman. For some 
years he had been State Chairman in Pennsylvania. 

During the campaign the candidates spoke in a number of the 
states but owing to the disorganized condition of the Party and 


468 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the difficulties in many states in getting on the ballot, the ticket 
was on the ballot in only fifteen states. 

A meeting of the National Committee was held in Washington, 
D. C., in December, 1924. The situation regarding both the 
enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment and the condition of 
the party was considered and it was agreed that the Prohibition 
party should continue to carry on its work. 

Another meeting of the Prohibition National Committee was 
held in December, 1925. By that time the unsatisfactory char- 
acter of prohibition enforcement and the political reasons therefor 
had become still more evident. There was an increasing convic- 
tion that the objectives of the Great Reform would not be ac- 
complished until there should be a political party in power com- 
mitted to prohibition as a matter of principle. The old political 
parties permeated through and through with subserviency to 
liquor politics had demonstrated themselves unworthy and in- 
capable of effectuating the Reform. There was felt to be an 
overwhelming need for a new politics inspired by high moral 
ideals, a new politics which should exalt righteousness in govern- 
ment, a new politics with vision and capacity commensurate with 
the possibilities of the new age.’ 

After fifty-six years of history the Prohibition party faced 
anew its unfinished task, its greater objectives ahead. At the 
fiftieth anniversary in I919, soon after the ratification of the 
Eighteenth Amendment the Prohibitionists looked to the past. 
In 1926 they look to the future.® 


2 At this meeting D. Leigh Colvin was elected Chairman of the Prohibition 
sae Committee. Headquarters were moved to 150 Fifth Avenue, New York 

ity. 

3In writing this book it was planned until the last to have a chapter sum- 
marizing the Prohibition party’s remarkable record of statesmanship upon the 
other governmental problems confronting the nation. A party which has the 
record of having been the first party to advocate each of the last four amend- 
ments to the Constitution and which had enunciated such sound and constructive 
policies relating to world peace, labor and many other questions deserves to 
have it more widely appreciated. But as the book had so lengthened it was 
decided to confine the special chapters to the various aspects of prohibition. The 
platforms, which have all been given in full, speak for themselves. 

The author prepared an extended chapter on “The Personalities of the Party” 
which included tributes to many individuals and groups who through the years 
performed loyal service to the Party. But after mentioning or listing about 2,500 
prominent Prohibitionists, the space permitted compared with their deserts was so 
inadequate, and the mere listing without telling more of their service was so un- 
satisfactory without expanding an already large book into another volume, that the 
publication was given up. This accounts for some omissions in this book which 
had been planned to include a fuller recognition of the orators, editors, political 
philosophers, book writers, prominent contributors, organizers, field workers, state 
and county chairmen and the many consecrated, faithful workers of the rank and 
file who labored and sacrificed to make a better country. 

In the Appendix are included the names of the official leaders of the Prohibition 
party, including every candidate for Governor in every state from 1869 to 1925, 
the members of the Prohibition National Committee, and the State Chairmen. 


ee 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 469 


SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY—I920-1925 

General. 
Vitson, Harotp D.—Dry Laws and Wet Politicians, 1922, 

108 pp. 
SHAW, Etton R.—Prohibition Going or Coming, 1924, 493 pp. 
Tirton, EvizaperH—Save America, 1923, 128 pp. 
Miner, Duncan C.—Lincoln and Liquor, 1920, 155 pp. 
Wuite, Cuartes T.—Lincoln and Prohibition, 1921, 233 pp. 
Mires, WALTER R.—Alcohol and Human Efficiency, 1924, 298 


pp: 

Carver, THomas Nixon—The Greatest Social Experiment in 
Modern Times, These Eventful Years (Cyclopedia Bri- 
tannica), Vol. 2, pp. 583-600, 1924. 

Watnut, T. HENry—Editor, Prohibition and Its Enforcement, 
1923, 325 pp. American Academy of Political and Social 
Science. 

Haynes, Roy A.—Prohibition Inside Out, 1923, 308 pp. 

SMITH, Frep B.—Editor, Law vs. Lawlessness, 1924, 186 pp. 

FarRNuM, Pror. Henry W.—Confessions of a Prohibitionist, 
10229 22: pp 

Woopsury, NatHan F.—Prohibition in Maine, 1920, 30 pp. 

BeMAN, Lemar T.—Prohibition: Modification of the Volstead 
Law, 1924, 388 pp. Debater’s Handbook Series, Briefs 
and reading material for and against. 

CHALFANT, Harry M.—Father Penn and John Barleycorn, 
1920, 291 pp. 

Results of Prohibition. 

The Prohibition Question viewed from the Economic and Moral 
Standpoint, Manufacturers’ Record, 1922, 84 pp., 4 vo. 

Pickett, DEets—How Prohibition Works in American Cities, 
O21. Ol pap)... VO; 

WILSON, CLARENCE TRUE, AND PicKETT, DEETtTs—The Case for 
Prohibition, Its Past, Present Accomplishments, and Fu- 
ture in America, 1923, 274 pp. 

Witson, Puitre W.—After Two Years—A Study of Ameri- 
can Prohibition (British Viewpoint), 1922, 115 pp. 
Gorpon, C. M., anp Girrorp—Three Thousand Miles of Pro- 

hibition (Australian Viewpoint), 1923, 295 pp. 

Gorpon, GirForp—Hold Fast America, 1922, 16 pp. 

STODDARD, Cora FRANcES—Prohibition in Massachusetts, 1922. 

STODDARD, CorA FRANcES—Wet and Dry Years in a Decade of 
Massachusetts Records, 1922, 54 pp. 





470 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


STODDARD, CorA FRANCES, AND CORRADINI, R. E.—New York 
City under Prohibition: I. Drunkenness and Public Or- 
der; II. Prohibition and Public Health, 1923, 16 pp. and 
8 pp., 4 vo. 

CorrADINI, R. E.—The Record of One Hundred American 

Cities, 1923, 80 pp., 4 vo. 

The Passing of the Saloons in New York City, 1923, 16 
Pp.» 4 VO. 

The Bowery under Prohibition, 1923, 24 pp., 4 vo. 

Broadway under Prohibition, 1924, 24 pp., 4 vo. 

—A Ten Year Record of Arrests for all Causes and Arrests 
for Intoxication in the Principal Cities of the United 
States of America, 1924, 16 pp., 4 vo. 

Saloon Survey of New York City, 1925, 32 pp., 4 vo. 

PoLtock, Dr. Horatio M., and Forsusu, Epirn M.—De- 
cline of Alcohol and Drugs as Causes of Mental Diseases, 
1921. Mental Hygiene, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp 123-129. Also, 
Alcoholic Psychoses Before and After Prohibition. 

GEMMILL, JuDGE WILLIAM N.—Results of National Prohibition 
in Chicago, 1923. Pamphlet. 

Jones, WesLey L.—Results of National Prohibition, Speech 
in U. S. Senate, Congressional Record, November 13, 
1921. 

Cramton, Hon. Louis G.—Results of Three Years of Na- 
tional Prohibition; Congressional Record, February 24, 
1922. 

Survey of the Alcoholic Liquor Traffic and the Enforcement of 
the Eighteenth Amendment, Report of Subcommittee on 
Alcoholic Liquor Traffic, House of Representatives, 68th 
Congress, Second Session, 1925, 14 pp. 

WHEELER, WayNE B.—Facing the Facts of Prohibition, Cur- 
rent Fistory Magazine, May, 1922. 

WILson, SAMUEL—Answered 77 Questions and Quibbles Re- 
garding National Prohibition, 1922, 26 pp. 

Current issues of The Union Signal, the national organ of the 
W. C. T. U., frequently contain many facts about the 
benefits of Prohibition. 

















Beer and Wine. 
MacDonatp, A. B.—Whirlpools of Beer, Ladies’ Home Jour- 
nal, November, 1923. 
Can We Trust the Brewers?, Ladies’ Home Journal. 
STODDARD, CorA FrRANcEs—Massachusetts’ Experience with 
Exempting Beer from Prohibition, 1921. 








5 


THE PROHIBITION PARTY, 1917-1925 471 


Vorsteap, Hon. A, J.—Light Wines and Beer and Prohibition 
Enforcement, Address reprinted from the Congressional 
Record, May 4, 1922, 16 pp. 

Witson, SAmuEL—Beer, Is It Intoxicating Liquor? 1923, 20 pp. 

The National Prohibition Law, Hearings before the Subcommit- 
tee of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States 
Senate, Sixty-ninth Congress, First Session, 1926. 2 vols. 
1660 pp. 


Chapter X XV 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION AND ITS ADMINISTRATION 
1920-1925 


The purpose of this chapter is to present an authoritative but 
condensed summary of the results of National Prohibition in its 
early years, together with an analysis of the adverse governmental 
and political conditions underlying its administration which have 
obstructed its more perfect operation. 

National prohibition did not come suddenly. In addition to 
the generations of agitation, education and legislation, the later 
stages immediately preceding its adoption gave ample notice of 
its approach. Before the United States entered the World War 
in April, 1917, twenty-six of the forty-eight states, two more 
than half, had adopted state prohibition. A twenty-seventh was 
added before the proposed Eighteenth Amendment was submitted 
in December, 1917, and by the time it went into operation in 
January, 1920, thirty-three states had adopted state prohibition.* 

The federal war restrictions began to be adopted in May, 1917. 
The chief war measures were as follows: 

1. The Selective Draft Act of May, 1917, forbade the sale of 
liquor to any officer or member of the military forces in uniform. 
Later the regulations also forbade the giving or serving of liquors 
to soldiers in uniform. Dry zones were established around camps 
and training stations. By the close of hostilities in November, 
1918, there were more than five million men in the military 
forces under the operation of prohibitory regulations. 

2. In the Food Control Act which became law, August Io, 
1917, Congress prohibited the use of foods, fruits, food materials 
and feeds in the production of distilled spirits for beverage pur- 
poses to go into effect in thirty days. The distilleries were com- 
pelled to shut down by September 10, 1917. This act also 
authorized the President to regulate or prohibit the production 
of malt or vinous liquors. 


Bp aa a fuller discussion of the progress of state prohibition, see infra, Chapter 
XXIII. 
472 





NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 473 


3. On December 8, 1917, President Wilson issued a proclama- 
tion prohibiting after January I, 1918, the production of malt 
liquor containing more than 2.75 per cent of alcohol, except ale 
and porter. He also reduced by 30 per cent the amount of food 
materials which could be used in the production of malt liquor. 

4. On September 16, 1918, the President issued a proclama- 
tion prohibiting after December 1, 1918, the production of malt 
liquors for beverage purposes including near-beer, whether or not 
such liquors contained alcohol, on account of the fuel necessities 
of the war industries. On October 1, 1918, the Food Adminis- 
tration prohibited the use of grain for making beer. These 
executive restrictions and prohibitions were relaxed, however, 
soon after the Armistice. 

5. The War Prohibition provisions of the Agricultural Ap- 
propriation Bill passed Congress in August, 1917, but the bill as 
a whole became a law on November 21, 1918. It provided for 
the prohibition of the production of malt and vinous liquors after 
May 1, 1919, and for the prohibition of the sale of all liquors 
after June 30, 1919, until the conclusion of the war and the ter- 
mination of demobilization. Under war prohibition the saloons 
were illegal after June 30, 1919. 

6. The Volstead Act to enforce war prohibition, and also con- 
stitutional prohibition when it should become operative, was 
repassed over the President’s veto, October 28, 1919. 

7. The Eighteenth Amendment went into effect on January 
16, 1920, one year after its ratification by the thirty-sixth state. 

The going into effect of the Eighteenth Amendment was thus 
the culmination of a succession of widely known prohibitions 
which helped to prepare the people for the notable day, January 
16, 1920, when the death of John Barleycorn was celebrated in 
many parts of the country. The stopping of the manufacture of 
malt and vinous liquors on May 1, 1919, had shut off from the 
saloons their supply of beer, the beverage which had comprised 
more than nine-tenths of all intoxicants sold. 

Notwithstanding false and persistent wet propaganda that pro- 
hibition had been “put across” in some unaccountable manner 
the people generally were well prepared for it, with the possible 
exception of some urban centers on the Eastern seaboard. 

The great majority of citizens assumed that prohibition had 
become the established policy of the nation. Of those who had 
been opposed to it a large proportion acquiesced in its observance. 
One popular magazine after making a survey estimated that the 


47 4 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


number of drinkers had been reduced from 20,000,000 to 
2,500,000,” 

The liquor interests had made dire prophecies of rebellion. 
They claimed that the laboring men would rally to the wet slogan, 
“No beer no work,” and lay down their tools, but the aggressive 
propaganda carried on to this end fell flat. They fought prohibi- 
tion in the courts and employed high priced lawyers, including 
Elihu Root, but they were defeated in every case and at every 
point. They carried on a propaganda trying to discredit prohibi- 
tion by asserting that it had been “put across” contrary to the 
wishes of the soldiers and by a minority. But at the elections 
held after the soldiers returned from the army greater majorities 
were given for prohibition than before. 

The first year of national constitutional prohibition brought 
such a widespread compliance with the law that the results pro- 
duced were so decisive and the benefits were so extraordinary that 
they may be described as almost miraculous. 

Some of the results are summarized in the next few pages. 
The aim has been to assemble in a condensed form the results 
of the most authoritative investigations which have been made 
and to present in broad outline some of the benefits which have 
accrued. Where statistics are available the aim has been to com- 
pare those for the period preceding 1917, when the war restric- 
tions began, with the first year of national prohibition, 1920. 


RESULTS OF PROHIBITION 


I. Social. 

A, Arrests for drunkenness. The arrests for drunkenness in 
fifty leading cities, the statistics of which were collected by Judge 
Gemmill of the Municipal Court of Chicago, fell from 302,074 
in 1917 to 110,149 in 1920, a decrease of O2 DET ACen be 

A study made by Mr. Robert E. Corradini shows that, in 185 
cities from which complete statistics were obtained, the average 
annual number of arrests for intoxication per thousand of popu- 
lation in the four years preceding 1917, IQ13 to 1916, was 23.4, 
and that the number in 1920 fell to 8.7, a reduction of 62 per 
cent. ; 

Even in the statistics gathered and promulgated by the wets it 
was revealed that in 349 cities, for each 100 arrests for drunken- 
ness in 1914 there were only 37 1n 1920 in proportion to popu- 


2 Cosmopolitan Magazine, December, 1921; article by William G. Shepherd, 
8 The New York Times, June 3, 1923. 





NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 AN5 


lation, a decrease of 63 per cent. Arrests for drunkenness were 
at their maximum in 1916 from which their fall by 1920 was 
over 64 per cent.* 

In a later assembling of data covering statistics from 626 cities, 
from 1917 to 1924, the index number of arrests for drunkenness 
fell from 116.1 in 1917, the first year in which statistics from 
this number of cities are available, to 41.3 in 1920. In other 
words, the proportion of arrests for drunkenness in all these 626 
cities was less than 36 per cent as great in 1920 as in I9QI7. 
These figures were presented at the hearings before the Sub- 
committee of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States 
Senate, April, 1926, page 1470. 

It should be said that the number of arrests for drunkenness 
is by no means an accurate measure of the actual amount of 
drunkenness, in many sections not even a close approximation. 
The arrests for drunkenness reflect primarily the attitude of the 
police administration, and the attitude of the police administration 
may be affected by several factors, such as the changing moral 
standards of the community, political influence, the desire to make 
a record, or the desire to influence public policy. 

It is generally recognized that as a general rule a much larger 
proportion of the people actually intoxicated are arrested under 
prohibition than under license. Under prohibition intoxication 
is an indication that the law has been violated and it is natural 
that the instances of drunkenness should be brought more con- 
spicuously to public attention than was the case when the saloon 
was recognized as a part of the current social order. 

Prohibition having set up a higher standard relating to liquor, 
having made a traffic unlawful which was formerly lawful, the 
natural effect would be that this higher standard would be re- 
flected by the police. This, combined with the public attention 
being directed to intoxication, would normally cause the police 
to arrest a larger proportion of those who are intoxicated than 
was the case under license. Under license drunkenness was the 
common result of the system and unless it was accompanied by 
disorderly conduct or flagrant breaking of the peace it was seldom 
that arrests were made. 

A more than 64 per cent decline in the arrests for drunkenness 
the first full year of prohibition, remarkable as that decline was, 
does not, therefore, reveal in full degree the contrast between 
the license and the prohibition periods. 


4 Report of Moderation League, 1925—supplemented by article in New York 
Times, December 3, 1925, correlating arrests for drunkenness with growth of 
population, giving index numbers. 


476 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


B. Prison Population. Judge Gemmill collected the prison 
statistics from a number of the leading states and he did not find 
a single state or a single prison where there was not a marked 
decrease in the prison population in 1919 and 1920. In Massa- 
chusetts the prisoners in all prisons in 1915 numbered 6,663; in 
1920, 2,352. 

In the Chicago Bridewell the prison population, January 1, 
1917, was 1,818; on January I, 1920, after six months of national 
war prohibition, it was 717.° 

In New York State the prison population decreased from 5,486 
in 1916 to 3,879 in 1920. The prison population in 1923 in- 
creased over 1920. But the United States census report shows 
that the penal population of the country dropped from 121.2 per 
100,000 in 1910 to 99.7 per 100,000 in 1923, a remarkable de- 
crease notwithstanding that prohibition had made the traffic in 
liquor a new crime, thereby adding to the prison population those 
violators of the prohibition law who received jail sentences. 

C. Commitments to Prison. In Indiana the average annual 
number of commitments to jails and to penal and correctional 
institutions in the years 1913-1916 was 42,128. In 1920 the 
number was 17,182, a decrease of 59 per cent.® 

In Washington, D. C., the average number of commitments 
to the workhouse in the years 1914-1916 was 6,506. In 1920 
there were 883, only slightly more than one-eighth as many." 

In New York State the Annual Report of the State Commis- 
sion of Prisons for the year 1920 shows that the commitments 
to prisons, reformatories, penitentiaries, county jails and penal 
institutions fell from an average of 113,582 in 1913-1915 to 
59,033 in 1920, a decrease of 48 per cent. The Report attributed 
the reduction in prison population to the curtailment of the 
liquor traffic and to the opportunities for employment at high 
wages. The maintenance of high wages, as will be shown, was 
attributable largely to prohibition. 

In Connecticut the penal and reform commitments fell from 
1,166 per 100,000 in 1916 to 378 in 1920, a decrease of 67 per 
cent. County jail commitments fell from 1,105 per 100,000 in 
1916 to 322 in 1920, a decrease of 70 per cent.® 

Prohibition was indeed providing a vital personal liberty to 


5 Hon. Louis C. Cramton, Congressional Record, February 14, 1923, speech on 
“Three Years of National Prohibition.” 

6 E, S. Shumaker, Indiana Wet and Dry. 

7 Senator Wesley L. Jones, Congressional Record, November 15, 1921; speech 
on “‘Results of Prohibition.” 

8T, Justin Steuart, $100,000,000°' Saved Connecticut in Three Dry Years 
(pamphlet). 





NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 ATT 


the thousands who otherwise would have been incarcerated—de- 
prived of all liberty. 

D. Decrease in Crime. There was a decided: decrease in the 
more serious crimes following the going into effect of prohibi- 
tion. In New York City offenses against the person decreased 
from 15,147 in 1916 to 9,862 in 1920. Offenses against chastity 
decreased from 5,594 in 1916 to 3,610 in 1920. Offenses against 
family and children fell from 5,948 in I916 to 3,869 in 1920.9 

In 1925 the Police Commissioner of New York City reported 
that serious crimes of violence such as murder, felonious assault,. 
assault and robbery, and burglary had decreased from 1 3,143 in 
1917 to 8,548 in 1924. 

In Massachusetts the average annual number of arrests for all 
causes in the years 1913-1916 was 177,153, with the number 
steadily increasing. In 1920 the number of arrests for all causes 
was 115,626, a decrease of 61,527, or nearly 35 per cent. Be- 
tween 1917 and 1920 the decrease was over 40 per cent,?? 

In Chicago, the felonies, misdemeanors and quasi-criminal 
cases filed in the Municipal Court diminished from 129,817 in 
1918 to 109,899 in 1920. The cases in the Morals Court fell 
from 7,745 in 1918 to 4,844 in 1920, a decrease of 37 per cent. 

In Connecticut commercialized sex offenses fell from 2 7ee 
100,000 population in 1916 to 7 in 1920, a decrease of 74 per 
cebhd? 

E. Offenses of Women and Children. In Massachusetts the 
average number of women annually arrested for drunkenness in 
the years 1913-1916 was 7,488, with the number increasing. In 
1920 the number of women arrested for drunkenness was 1 868. 
The number saved from arrest by prohibition was 5,020, or over 
75 per cent.%® 

The number of women in all penal institutions in Massachu- 
setts fell from an average of 762 at the close of the institutional 
years 1913-1916 to 269 in 1920, a decrease of 64 per cent.** 

The arrests in Boston of youths under fifteen years fell from 
an average in the period 1913-1916 of 2,386 to 1,828 in 1920, a 
decrease of 23 per cent. Arrests of minors for drunkenness fell 


9New York City Under Prohibition; data compiled for the Committee on 
Prohibition Studies appointed by The National Temperance Council, edited by 
Miss Cora Frances Stoddard and Mr. Robert E. Corradini. 

10 Cora F. Stoddard, Wet and Dry Years in a Decade of Massachusetts Public 
Records, p. 13. 

11 Clarence True Wilson and Deets Pickett, The Case for Prohibition, p. 1209. 

12 Steuart, op. cit., p. ro. 

13 Miss Stoddard, op. cit., p. 14. 

14 Ibid., p. 16. 


478 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


from an average of 644 in those years to 326 in 1920, nearly 
one-half.*° 

It should be said that the best social statistics available are 
those in Massachusetts and an excellent study of them has been 
made by Miss Cora Frances Stoddard, the results of which were 
published in a 54-page book, Wet and Dry Years in a Decade 
of Massachusetts Public Records. ‘This is the best study thus 
far made from official records. Massachusetts however does not 
afford as good an example of the benefits of prohibition as many 
other states, as not until late in 1924 did that state have even a 
moderately satisfactory state enforcement law to provide for 
the cooperation of the state officials in the enforcement of the 
Eighteenth Amendment. 

In Chicago the cases of juvenile delinquency for the three years 
1917-1919 averaged 3,148 and in the three years 1920-1922 they 
averaged 2,294. In the years preceding national prohibition the 
number of cases of juvenile delinquency had been going up each 
year. Beginning with 1920 the number went down each year. 
In the first three years of prohibition 2,563 less children were 
delinquent in Chicago than in the three years before prohibition.*® 

In New York City the cases of juvenile delinquency decreased 
from an average of 977.09 per 100,000 population, ages 7 to 15 
years, in the five-year period 1910-1914 inclusive, to 646.25 in 
1920 and decreased further to an average of only 547.21 in the 
five-year period 1920-1924. In other words, the statistics demon- 
strate the striking fact that the number of cases of juvenile 
delinquency in New York City in the first five-year period under 
prohibition was only 56 per cent as great as in the corresponding 
period a decade earlier, 1910-1914. 

PF, Alcoholic Cases. In Bellevue Hospital, New York, the 
alcoholic cases fell from 10,691 in I9g10 to 2,001 in 1920, a 
, decrease of 81 per cent. Compared with the total number of 
cases treated the alcoholic cases fell from 31.9 per cent in 1910 
to 5.8 per cent in 1920. 

In the Washingtonian Home in Chicago, an institution for the 
care of drunkards, in the years 1910-1919 the average number of 
cases treated was 921, of which 56 per cent had delirium tremens. 
In 1920 the number of cases of all kinds was only 125, of which 
only three had delirium tremens. Out of about 240 institutions 
for the care of inebriates which had treated hundreds of thou- 
sands of patients, nearly all were closed. There had been 68 


15 Miss Stoddard, op. cit., p. 19. . 
16 Judge William N. Gemmill, Prohibition in Chicago. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 479 


Neal Institutes which in the last twelve years before prohibition 
had treated 125,000 patients. After two years of prohibition 
they were all closed. There had been fifty Keeley institutes, some 
of them very large. Nearly all went out of business. 

G. Deaths from Alcoholism. This is a field where the statistics 
are by no means an accurate register, due especially to the long 
existing disinclination to report a death as due to alcoholism if 
there was any other attributable reason. It is probable that 
under prohibition a much larger percentage of the deaths actually 
due to alcoholism are so reported due to the fact that the extra 
poisonous character of the illicit liquors, which some persist in 
drinking, produces sudden death, the reason for which is evident 
and unescapable. But taking the figures as given in official 
statistics, the deaths from alcoholism in the registration area of 
the United States, comprising about 82 per cent of the total 
population of the country, were reduced in 1920 to less than one- 
fifth, in proportion to population, of what they averaged in the 
five-year period ending in 1916. The rate fell from an average 
of 5.2 per 100,000 in those years to 1.0 in 1920. 

In nineteen large cities, each over 300,000 population, the 
reported deaths from alcoholism fell from a total of 1,954 in. 
IQ16 to 321 in 1920, a decrease of 83 per cent. 

In New York City the deaths from alcoholism fell from 687 
in 1916 to 98 in 1920. 

Among the millions of industrial policyholders of the Metro- 
politan Life Insurance Company the alcoholism death rate fell 
from a rate per 100,000 policyholders of an average of 4.9 in 
the five years ending in 1916 to .6 in 1920.27 

H. Decline in General Death Rate. There was a decided de- 
cline in the general death rate. It declined from an average of 
13.84 in the five-year period, 1912-1916, to 12.12 in the five-year 
period, 1920-1924, a reduction of nearly one-eighth. Based upon 
the present population, the decline in the death rate means over 
192,000 less deaths per year than in the pre-prohibition period. 

The decline was not due entirely to prohibition but a large 
share should be so attributed. 

The steady decline in the death rate from tuberculosis was 
notable, it having fallen 36 per cent from the period 1912-1916 
to 1923. Among the reasons were better home conditions and 
better nutrition made possible through the economic benefits of 
prohibition, as well as the diminished consumption of alcohol. 


17 Cora F, Stoddard, “Alcoholism Mortality in Large American Cities” in Scien- 
tific Temperance Journal, Spring, 1924, 


480 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


There were also large decreases in the death rate from other 
diseases in which alcohol had been a factor due to its depression 
of vitality and its breaking of protective barriers.*® 

I, Alcoholic Insamty. Alcoholic insanity cases admitted to 
the New York State hospitals decreased from an average of 5.4 
~ per 100,000 population in the eight-year period ending 1916, and 
5.6 in 1916, to 1.2 per 100,000 in 1920."° 

In Massachusetts the first admissions to insane hospitals fell 
from the average of 313 for the five years ending 1916 to 102 
in 1920.”° 

In Massachusetts in 1917 of all the first admissions to the 
insane hospitals 27.67 per cent were known to be of intemperate 
habits. In 1920 only 10.57 per cent. 

J. Decrease in Pauperism. Throughout the country there was 
a decided decrease in pauperism and poverty. In Boston the 
admissions to almshouses which during the five years preceding 
1917 averaged 3,836, fell to 1,261 in 1920, a decrease of 67 per 
Cent 

In Chicago the number of the inmates of the Oak Forest In- 
firmary, or poorhouse, fell from 8,904 in 1916 to 6,283 in 1920. 

In New York the daily average of lodgers in the Municipal 
Lodging House for the years 1914-1916 was 661, in 1920 it 
was 70. 

Most of the statistics thus far given are from the large centers 
of population where the saloon was the most deeply entrenched, 
where alcohol had debauched the people the worst and where 
naturally it would be the most difficult to reform conditions and 
achieve a full degree of the social benefits of prohibition. 

Only a minute fraction of the benefits of prohibition can be 
measured by the statistics relating to such subjects as arrests for 
drunkenness, crime, insanity and pauperism above recorded. Not- 
withstanding the very remarkable statistical facts above given of 
the results of national prohibition in its first year, by far greater 
benefits were experienced by the vast multitudes of people who 
are never included in such statistics. 

KK. Removal of the Saloon. Prohibition to a very large degree 
removed the temptation of the open saloon with its ubiquitous 
invitation to drink. Before prohibition, in 1916, there were 

18 Dr. Howard A. Kelly, “Health and Morals Under Prohibition” in Health, 
February, 1924, republished in Congressional Record of December 20, 1924, 
under ‘‘Extension of Remarks” of Hon. William D. Upshaw. 

yi Dr. Horatio M. Pollock, Alcoholic Psychosis Before and After Prohibition, 


toa 
20 Cora Frances Stoddard, Wet and Dry Years in a Decade of Massachusetts 
Public Records, p. 55. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 481 


184,718 retail liquor selling places holding federal internal reve- 
nue receipts, most of which were saloons. Allowing twenty-five 
feet front, these would extend in unbroken line side by side 
farther than from New York to Chicago. Nearly every one was 
a center of degraded sociability, debauchery, degeneracy and law- 
lessness. It is significant that even the most aggressive wet 
propagandists have nothing good to say of the saloon. They 
‘admit that the saloon was bad and they profess they do not 
wish it to return. Prohibition closed most of the saloons and 
outlawed the rest. Those saloons which continued illicitly sold 
only a fraction of the liquor they formerly sold. 

2. Economic. 

Prohibition has wrought an economic revolution, the most sig- 
nificant and far-reaching since the industrial revolution of over 
a century ago. 

A. Diversion of Drink Expenditure. Despite the fact of very 
imperfect enforcement, prohibition has diverted the expenditure 
of approximately two billion dollars a year from a wasteful and 
injurious traffic to industries which are useful and beneficial. In 
fact it undoubtedly diverted more because the nearly two and a 
half billion dollars which were wasted annually before the war 
would have greatly increased if it had not been for prohibition. 
If the drink bill had increased in the eleven years from 1914 to 
1925 in the same proportion as it did in the eleven-year period 
preceding 1914, before the progress of prohibition had checked 
the liquor consumption, by 1925 the drink bill would have 
amounted to about three and a quarter billions, not taking into 
account the post-war moral reactions and the general rise in the 
scale of prices. The latter would have increased this amount 
about 60 per cent, or to over five billions. 

Furthermore, the liquor industry was a parasitic industry which 
employed only a relatively small amount of labor in the manu- 
facture of its product, compared to other industries, and required 
only a relatively small amount of raw materials. According to 
a study based on the statistics of the census of 1910, the manu- 
facture of liquor required only about 40 per cent as much raw 
materials as the average of twenty other leading industries and 
employed only about one-third of the labor.** 

Prohibition thus diverted the expenditure to other industries 
which employed much more labor and required much more raw 


21 American Prohibition Year Book, 1915, article on “Economic Aspects of 
the Liquor Problem,” p. 44; also, Waldron, Prohibition Handbook, pp. 20-34; 
and H. S. Warner, Social Welfare and the Liquor Problem, pp. 103-111. 


482 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


materials, which in turn required a correspondingly larger amount 
of labor to produce. Prohibition thus not only withdrew billions 
of expenditure from an injurious traffic but by diverting them to 
legitimate industries it set in operation an ever- -expanding series 
of economic forces unprecedented and unparalleled in scope and 
beneficence. 

B. Increased Productivity. Prohibition has greatly increased 
productive capacity. To the extent that men have become free 
from the incubus of alcohol, they have clearer minds, steadier 
nerves, better judgment, are more industrious, more ambitious 
and more inventive. The efficiency of workingmen has greatly 
increased. 

Factories have been able better to utilize their machine power. 
Fewer machines are idle through the absence of workers on ac- 
count of illness or drink. Thus the productivity of both the 
machinery and the workmen has been increased. 

Many employers have reported that under prohibition the tape 
turnover is smaller. The men are steadier and the industry does 
not lose in output by reason of having to break in new men. 

Industrial accidents, a great drain upon industry as well as 
disastrous for the victims, have greatly decreased under 
prohibition. 

With productivity greatly enhanced, there has been made pos- 
sible a largely increased return to both labor and capital. Accord- 
ing to generally accepted economic theory productivity is the basis 
of returns to both labor and capital. Prohibition thus has made 
possible higher wages for labor as well as greater prosperity for 
capital. 

C. Enlarged Demand. The diversion of a large proportion of 
the colossal drink bill, plus the fact that the expenditure is for 
commodities requiring much more labor and raw materials to 
produce, plus the greater productivity of industry with higher 
wages and more to spend have created an unprecedented demand 
for the products of legitimate industries. Prohibition has made 
possible new markets and stimulated production to supply the new 
demands. Better homes, better furniture, better clothes, better 
food and better recreation are demanded. More raw materials, 
more products of the farm, the forest, the mine and the oil well 
have been required. These, in turn, have demanded more labor 
for their production and more factories and labor for their manu- 
facture. The increased demand for labor has helped to keep 
wages high and thus there has been prosperity for all. 


ee ee eee 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 — 483 


D. Higher Standard of Living. Prohibition has raised the 
standard of living. Sober workingmen have higher tastes than 
those whose brains are perverted, senses blunted and _ tastes 
coarsened by alcohol. Under prohibition labor produces more, 
earns more, obtains higher wages, has more wages to spend. It 
also spends both the money formerly spent for liquor and also | 
the increased wages which increased productivity brings for com- ~ 
modities which require much more labor to produce than did 
liquor. This in turn greatly increases the demand for labor which 
results in maintaining higher wages wherewith to support the 
higher standard of living. Prohibition thus furnishes the will 
for a higher standard of living and also the means, the economic 
basis, whereby it may be maintained. 

This higher standard of living has been evidenced in a thou- 
sand ways. American workingmen have been buying not only 
necessities but comforts and luxuries on a tremendous and un- 
precedented scale. Perhaps the most notable evidence of the 
widespread rise in the standard of living has been the increase 
in automobiles, increasing from 1,700,000 in 1914 to over 
20,000,000 in 1925. 

E. Benefits to Labor. Prohibition has brought immeasurable 
benefits to labor. It has been an outstanding factor in main- 
taining wages at the high level of war times and even higher. As 
a result of prohibition, even though it is poorly enforced, labor 
is more efficient, produces more, is worth more and receives more 
real wages than ever before. Higher wages are due not only to 
greater productivity but also to the effect of the tremendously 
increased demand for labor. 

Prohibition makes possible the maintenance and enjoyment of 
a higher standard of living with increasing opportunities for 
betterment and an expanding content to life for the masses of 
the people. 

Prohibition has strengthened the cause of organized labor. It 
has increased reserve power, poise and judgment in labor diff- 
culties, rendering conflicts less frequent and strikes less common. 

Says Congressman John G. Cooper, himself a labor unionist 
and one of the foremost supporters of prohibition in Congress: 


Prohibition is making a capitalist of the worker, creating a gen- 
eral ownership of the means of production and solving a strife 
that once seemed perpetual. Greater gains have been made by labor 
since the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment, with fewer strikes, 
than in any equal period of time. When the saloon closed, the 
“poor man’s club” may have vanished, but we are replacing it today 


484 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


with comfortable homes, fine labor temples and a chain of strong 
labor banks. 


Not only have workingmen in vast numbers been buying com- 
fortable homes and automobiles but their accumulating savings 
have come to be a not inconsiderable factor in the supply of 
capital for the expansion of industry. Not only is labor establish- 
ing an increasing number of labor banks, but it is supplying a 
large and increasing number of small investors for various en- 
terprises. Thomas’ Nixon Carver, Professor of Economics in 
Harvard University, stated in 1925 that the investments of 
workers in the shares of corporations are increasing so rapidly 
that all statistics are “out of date before they are published.” 

Prohibition is helping to wipe out the distinction between the 
“haves” and the “have nots.” The American workingmen be- 
long to the “haves.” Prohibition is promoting a better distribu- 
tion of wealth, a greater equality of opportunity, a more ideal 
economic society.”” 

F. Enhanced Credit. Prohibition has enhanced credit. This 
is a factor exceedingly important in modern business. It adds to 
purchasing power. The sober man is more dependable. The 
bases of credit are tremendously increased, such as investments in 
homes, in life insurance, savings banks, building and loan asso- 
ciations and the securities of corporations. Mr. R. H. Scott, 
President of the Reo Motor Car Company, says: 


Prohibition has raised the credit of practically every human be- 
ing in America. Defalcations are comparatively few. Families 
are able to pay their current bills and meet their installments because 
the liquor bill is gone. Men who could not have “hung up” the 
bartender for a drink in the old days are now considered good risks 
for a motor car. 


G. Fiscal Results. Prohibition has produced fiscal results 
which are amazing. It has made a broader base for taxation and 
rendered easy the problem of finding new revenues to take the 
place of the old license fees. By increasing productivity and 
stimulating industry prohibition has added enormously to the 
wealth of the nation capable of being taxed. ‘The increasing mil- 
lions of people receiving taxable incomes testify to the rapidly 
expanding and widely distributed national wealth. 

In its effect upon real estate alone prohibition has caused a 
marvelous increase in values. Not only has home building been 


22 For a further discussion of the economic aspects of prohibition, see Chapter 
XXVIII, ‘‘The Principle of National Prohibition.” 


a Se ee a 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 485 


promoted and have new buildings to house expanding enterprises 
been required, all of which adds to realty values, but the saloon 
sites themselves have been so transformed as to add much to 
taxable values. 

Saloons have been supplanted by banks, office buildings, depart- 
ment stores, chain stores, grocery stores, restaurants, movie 
theaters, art shops, soft drink shops, candy and coffee shops, and 
other enterprises. Many ramshackle buildings, good enough for 
saloons, have been supplanted by high class modern ones. 

A comparative study was made of the assessed valuation of 
forty-eight properties on Broadway, New York City, which in 
1916 housed saloons but which were discontinued. The increase 
in the valuation between 1916 and 1923 was sufficient that a tax 
of only one per cent on the increase alone would supply about 
five times the revenue, state and local, paid by the former saloons. 

In 1924 motor vehicle taxes alone amounted to nearly one and 
a half times the maximum ever received from liquor, national, 
state, and local combined, except in the war fiscal years, 1918 and 
1919. Experience under prohibition has proven the soundness 
of Gladstone’s famous statement: ‘“Give me a sober nation and I 
will find the revenue.” 

H. Prohibition and Post-War Prosperity. Prohibition was 
a great factor in maintaining and augmenting prosperity in the 
United States in the critical period following the World War. 
The stupendous economic benefits are all the more amazing con- 
sidering that they were achieved in the face of an economic de- 
pression almost worldwide in extent. Prohibition went into effect 
just following the most destructive war of all history, a period 
when nearly every nation was financially exhausted, when our 
foreign markets were greatly curtailed and when the world was 
beset by extremely serious post-war reactions, economic, political 
and moral. Prohibition was undoubtedly a very great factor in 
saving our country from a serious economic depression. 

Contrary to popular impression abroad, the United States did 
not grow rich out of the World War. On the contrary, she put 
nearly forty billions into the war. A noted financial authority 
writing in the Wall Street Journal in 1925 pointed out that 
America lost heavily in the war but made its money afterwards. 
He pointed out that the great concerns which furnished ordnance, 
gunpowder, provisions and other supplies did not gain perma- 
nently from the war but rather suffered. A large part of their 
profits were placed in over-expanded plants or lost in the fall of 
post-war inventories. This writer says that after the war Amer- 


486 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


ica went to work, paid higher wages and multiplied the output of 
men and machines in peaceful pursuits and that it was this which 
made us prosperous. 

In this prohibition played a great part. It made men more 
industrious and efficient. They produced more. This made them 
worth higher wages. Higher wages together with enhanced 
credit gave larger purchasing power. These factors together 
with the diversion of billions from former liquor expenditure 
and the higher standard of living vastly increased the demand 
for commodities. The demand for labor to produce these com- 
modities helped to keep wages high and the standard of living 
high with expanding wants. Increasing wants together with the 
increasing wealth of all classes expanded the home market and 
stimulated industry to such a degree that the curtailment of for- 
eign markets was not seriously felt, except by agriculture which 
had depended upon foreign markets for a large export surplus. 
But agriculture as a whole obtained a very much greater home 
market for its products than would have been the case without 
prohibition. 

The stimulus to industry and increased output continuously 
added to wealth and brought a prosperity hitherto unequaled and 
unapproached. Prohibition was helping to make America pros- 
perous beyond computation. Nor did the economic influence of 
prohibition stop with our own country. Increasing production 
resulting in increasing wealth followed by increasing wants 
created additional demand for the products of other nations which 
helped to revive international trade and to improve conditions 
throughout the world. 

For example, the widespread demand for automobiles required 
additional rubber for tires, which was supplied by Great Britain 
at a high price which, however, our productivity enabled us to 
pay. The profits from rubber in turn helped that nation to 
stabilize her economic system. The benefits were worldwide. 

3. Educational and Moral. 

A. Prohibition’s effect upon education has been most salutary 
and far-reaching. Multitudes of young people who otherwise 
would have been compelled to leave school and go to work to 
help support the family have been enabled to continue in school 
and become better fitted for efficient citizenship. More and larger 
high schools have been required in all sections of the country 
and the colleges and universities are filled to overflowing. 

B, The church has a better opportunity to reach the masses 
of the people and to initiate great constructive programs. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 487 


Catholic and Protestant churches alike reported a larger church 
attendance. In 1921, the second year of prohibition, church 
membership increased 1,200,000. 

Said Commander Evangeline Booth, the head of the Sal- 
vation Army in the United States, after citing the benefits of 
prohibition: 


It seems that in the future we shall have less to do with the 
grave and more to do with the cradle; less binding up of life’s 
broken plants, and more training of life’s untrammeled vines; that 
more of our energies will be thrown into work of prevention, which 
in the final analysis must be so much more valuable to the home, 
the nation and the Kingdom of God than even the most worthy 
work totmenre.).', % 

By the prohibition constitutional amendment a measure has been 
enacted that will do more to bring the Kingdom of God upon earth 
than any other single piece of legislation. 


Space does not permit a further massing of facts and figures 
regarding the benefits of prohibition. Sufficient to say is that 
almost the whole field of social, economic and moral welfare has 
shown a radical and unprecedented improvement under prohibi- 
tion. Early in 1922 the Manufacturers’ Record sent a question- 
naire to hundreds of leading men of affairs including large manu- 
facturers, employers of labor, bankers and university professors 
asking their judgment about prohibition. Ninety-eight and one- 
half per cent favored prohibition in some form, The following 
brief extracts suggest some of the moral and economic benefits 
as they appeared to these men: 


Happier homes with more contentment, cleaner and better social 
life, families happier. 


Increased buying of homes and food and clothes for women and 
children. 


A change in the habits and expenditures of the workers. Men 
are buying their own homes, have saving accounts and own auto- 
mobiles. 


A tendency toward thrift and contentment, comfort and happi- 
ness. Families are better cared for. An increase in savings de- 
posits. 

More and cleaner recreation, picture shows, parks, auto rides. 

Contributing materially to clear thinking on the part of the work- 
ingman regarding industrial questions, political matters and educa- 


tional affairs. They no longer go to the polls partially stupefied 
by liquor to vote at the behest of saloon politicians. 


v 


488 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Less lost time, less accidents, less incompetence, less carelessness 
and inefficiency, better work, better homes, more thrift, happier 
families and sober and more efficient men who are now finding out 
what it means to really live whereas they formerly merely existed. 


Children and young people getting a better education. 
School attendance, both public and Sunday school, has improved. 
Community morale has improved. 


An incalculable economic and moral blessing to millions of our 
people, and to the nation as a whole. 


“From the point of view of public health prohibition has been 
a wonder worker,” said Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, for many years 
Chief Chemist of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and Dr. 
Haven Emerson, former Health Commissioner of New York 
City, declared: “Nothing since the application of modern bac- 
teriology to the control of communicable disease will have so 
powerful an effect in reducing the incidence of disease and the 
general death rate as prohibition.” | 

Thus the testimony continued as to the results and benefits of 
prohibition. 


THE ADMINISTRATION OF PROHIBITION 


Unfortunately the available measurements and indices indicate 
that the social results of prohibition in the years following 1920, 
1921-1925, have not measured up to those of that epochal year. 

In a number of respects the improvement has continued. The 
economic benefits, due partly to the accumulation of billions of 
new capital, have been cumulative. 

They have permeated the entire nation and brought increasing 


returns to the whole people. Even the noisy and conspicuous 


minority who refuse to respect the law of the Constitution share 
in the general improvement in the economic environment. 

The economic and moral welfare of untold millions of the 
people has been vastly bettered. Despite violations of law the 
great majority of the people are law observing and enjoy an 
increasing measure of both individual and national benefits. 
Most of the violations are committed either by the froth or by 
the dregs of society. The great multitudes share in the general 
advance in economic well-being as probably never before in 
history. 

Among other things the evidence shows a great and continuing 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 489 


improvement in family life with very much less misery among 
women and children, diminishing juvenile delinquency and a 
marvelous increase in home comforts throughout the nation. 

The enhanced opportunities for higher education and its rapidly 
increasing diffusion signify the entrance upon a new epoch preg- 
nant with unlimited possibilities of a richer content to life. The ~ 
national health has so improved that a leading authority has 
declared that the year 1924 was the healthiest on record. 

On the other hand Anti-Prohibitionists cite statistics as evi- 
dence of the failure of prohibition. These relate chiefly to (a) 
the increase of arrests for drunkenness since 1920, (b) the in- 
crease in deaths from alcoholism since 1920, and (c) the increase 
in insanity since 1920. 

The arrests for drunkenness in 349 cities based on 100 as the 
index number for the year 1914 rose to 108 in 1916, fell to 37 
in 1920, but rose to 49 in 1921, 65 in 1922, 75 in 1923 and 74 
in 1924, reaching the maximum since prohibition in 1923 with a 
slight decline in 1924. In the latter year they were double what 
they were in 1920 but less than three-fourths what they were be- 
fore prohibition. 

The alcoholism death rate of the registration area of the 
United States which fell from 5.2 to I.o in 1920 rose to 3.2 in 
1923. 
In New York the admissions to insanity hospitals of alcoholic 
insanity cases which had fallen from 594 in 1917 to 122 in 1920 
rose to 226 in 1922. In 1924 after the repeal of the state en- 
forcement law they increased to 373. 

The facts revealed by these statistics are not as serious as ap- 
pears on the surface for reasons already explained with reference 
to arrests for drunkenness not being an accurate register of the 
actual amount of drunkenness. Also increases in deaths from 
alcoholism and in alcoholic insanity are the natural result of the 
extra-poisonous alcohol purveyed by the criminal bootleggers. 
Of the 50,000 samples of liquor seized in and around New York 
City analyzed by government chemists in 1924 and 1925 over 98 
per cent. contained poison from denatured alcohol. 

It is to be observed that in the statistics quoted by the wet 
propagandists the current conditions are compared with 1920 and 
not with the wet period before. The proper comparison should 
be between the prohibition period and the pre-prohibition period. 
This the wet propagandists do not care to face. | 

Nevertheless, although poorly enforced prohibition is far su- 
perior to the licensed liquor traffic at its best, there has been a 


490 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


widespread feeling that prohibition has not accomplished as much 
as its first year held out the promise or as much as hoped for by 
those who sacrificed for it through many years. Conditions 
should have become better from year to year under national pro- 
hibition instead of becoming not so good as the first year. The 
reasons for the reaction demand analysis. They were chiefly 
political and governmental. They involve a study of (a) the 
law, (0b) the administration of the law, and (c) the political sys- 
tem underlying the administration of prohibition. 


The Volstead Law 


To enforce the Eighteenth Amendment Congress passed the 
Volstead Law. Some of its significant provisions were: 

1. Construing the term “intoxicating liquor’ to include all 
liquor fit for beverage purposes which contains one-half of one 
per cent of alcohol by volume. This construction was merely a 
continuation of what had come to be the established legal standard 
of the nation upon this point. For many years the federal gov- 
ernment had fixed the line of demarcation between taxable and 
untaxable liquors at one-half of one per cent. The brewers 
themselves in 1904 had actively supported this standard. The 
United States Supreme Court in a decision upholding the Vol- 
stead Law, Ruppert v. Caffey (251 U. S. 264), pointed out that 
thirty-six states had adopted a standard at least as advanced 
as one-half of one per cent and that eighteen states had gone 
farther and prohibited all malt or vinous beverages no matter 
how small the alcoholic content.” 

Mr. Volstead pointed out that the legislative history of the 
country, both state and national, showed that prohibition in- 
cluded under its ban all liquors which contained as much as one- 
half of one per cent of alcohol. 

2. The act provided penalties for violations. ‘These came to 
be regarded, notably by the Department of Justice, as too light 
for the more serious offenses. For the first offense the maximum 
penalty was $1,000 fine and six months in prison.. To provide 
reasonably adequate punishment for the large scale violators 
prosecutors frequently proceeded under other statutes such as 
those against conspiracy or under the revenue or customs laws 
because the penalties for violation of these laws were much 
heavier. 


23 For history of Supreme Court decisions upon prohibition, see infra, 
Chapter XXVI. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 AQ 


3. The injunction and padlock provisions were probably the 
most effective provisions of the law. 

4. The search and seizure provisions were weak, having been 
patterned after similar provisions in the Espionage Act from 
which the teeth had been purposely removed.** A man’s home 
could be searched only in case a sale had been detected, not in 
case of manufacture. This opened the way to the making of 
home brew which temporarily threatened to become a fad in 
some sections. This soon died out—not due to the efficiency of 
the law, but because of the unsatisfactory character of the 
product. Considerable small scale distilling has been carried on 
in dwellings, ostensibly homes, because of the Act’s limited pro- 
visions regarding the issuance of search warrants. 

s. An unfortunate provision which engendered considerable 
dissatisfaction especially among the poorer drinking classes was 
that which permitted the retention of stocks of liquors obtained 
before the Act went into effect. 

6. The continuance of the policy of taxing a commodity which 
had been outlawed by the Constitution, as provided for in section 
35 of the Act, was very questionable and dangerous. It was like 
prohibiting burglars’ tools but taxing them if found. It tended 
to cause the administrators of the law to put the revenue feature 
ahead of the prohibitory. Frequently they collected taxes and 
failed to carry out the constitutional prohibition and suppress the 
traffic. When the Volstead Law was passed the specious argu- 
ment was made that by combining criminal punishments and tax 
penalties enforcement would be made easier. But so long had 
the liquor traffic been entrenched in the revenues that the inter- 
mingling of criminality and the levying of taxes was exceedingly 
unwise. The whole policy of commingling liquor prohibition and 
liquor revenue was the outcome of the old party lack of con- 
viction and absence of clear moral vision resulting from a half 
century of governmental dependence upon liquor revenue. An 
extremely questionable feature was a provision empowering the 
Commissioner of Internal Revenue with the approval of the 
Secretary of the Treasury to compromise in the payment of 
penalties. It was substantially a case of government officials 
negotiating with criminals. 

What has been the result? Although large penalties have 
been assessed only a small amount has been collected. In 1925 
it was testified in a Senatorial investigation that in 1924 the as- 
sessments aggregated $16,909,855 but that after compromise 


24 See debate on Volstead Law, Congressional Record, July 19, 1919, p. 2901. 


4.92 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


only $704,696 was collected, a little over four per cent. One 
example brought to light was of a brewery which was assessed 
$105,000 but which was compromised for $5,000 and the brewery 
continued to violate the law. Notwithstanding the large amounts 
assessed, the amount collected under the tax and tax penalty 
provisions of the Act went down each year, due partly to court 
decisions adverse to the method, until in the fiscal year 1925 
only $560,888 was collected. 

7, The provision permitting breweries to make regular beer 
with the supposition that before sale they would reduce the alco- 
holic content to below one-half of one per cent was the colossal 
blunder of prohibitory legislation. It contravened the first object 
of prohibitory legislation which is to stop the traffic at its source. 
Permitting brewers to make regular beer with the supposition that 
they would dealcoholize it was something new in prohibitory 
legislation. In the Congressional debate Mr. Volstead stated: 
“For the first time we have written into a prohibition bill the per- 
mission to make near-beer.”’ *° 

What has been the result? The breweries have been left almost 
intact as a fighting force striving to come back. Although of 
about 1,332 breweries operating in 1916 something over two hun- 
dred were dismantled, the large majority remain. In August, 
1925, the Prohibition Unit gave out the information that at that 
time, over six years after the selling of beer had ceased to be legal, 
there were 1,126 potential brewery sites in the United States 
scattered in thirty-six states and the District of Columbia. 
That is, there remained 1,126 breweries all fitted up ready to 
make beer practically upon twenty-four hours’ notice. The 
brewers held to the hope that beer would come back and many of 
them were holding on with that object in view. 

When it is remembered that it was the breweries which made 
over nine-tenths of the liquor consumed in the old days, that 
brewery capital comprised 87 per cent of the whole liquor capital, 
that it was the brewers who owned the large majority of the 
saloons with all their colossal evils, that it was the breweries which 
were the chief factors in corrupting and degrading politics and 
that they were the chief factors in the old deterioration and de- 
generation, it will be readily seen that to permit them: to remain, 
even to lie dormant, was an egregious blunder. It was toying 
with rattlesnakes. 

Furthermore, there was no doubt that much of the propaganda 
for the return of beer and light wines came from the brewers 


25 Congressional Record, October 6, 1919, p. 6691. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 493 


who would be the chief beneficiaries of such return. About 
forty wet organizations were organized. Some of them seemed 
to be well supplied with funds, and were no doubt camouflaged 
agencies of the brewers. After several years of quiet, so far as 
the public knew, the United States Brewers’ Association took on 
renewed activity in 1925 and it was announced that there was a 
large fund to carry on a campaign against prohibition. 

It was understood that some of the breweries had set aside 
large funds. One brewery in the Middle West, not one of the 
best known either, was reported on good authority to have set 
aside $5,000,000 as a war chest, a part of which was understood 
to be invested, through a subsidiary corporation, in the stocks 
and bonds of daily newspapers. 

Notwithstanding the efforts of the breweries to create a market 
for their near-beer, called cereal beverage, their production went 
steadily down each year until by 1924 it was less than one- 
thirteenth of the production of regular beer ten years before and 
only a little more than half the production of 1921. This was 
evidence that the beverage was not popular, despite the efforts to 
create a demand, and that it was the alcoholic content, the kick in 
it, which had enabled the brewers to sell so much beer in the pre- 
prohibition period. 

While the sale of real beer was not large enough to be a very 
serious factor comparatively, having been probably not more 
than one or two per cent that of the license period, the breweries 
remained as a constant menace, made worse by the disgraceful 
manner in which the law was administered. For a long time the 
regulations made by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, with 
the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, did not permit the 
government officers, so it was said, to enter the breweries except 
during office hours, notwithstanding that many of the law-defying 
breweries carried on their illicit traffic at night. Furthermore, 
breweries were allowed to put their beer in barrels and other con- 
tainers which could be shipped. The system was practically 
that of trusting the untrustable brewers to observe the law and 
limiting the officers of the government to stopping the violations 
after the high-powered beer was discovered in transit. Further- 
more, owing to the large profits procurable in the illicit traffic and 
the fabulous bribes brewers could offer, they were a great source 
of temptation to, and corruption of, government agents. 

The foolishness of trusting the brewers to observe the law 
was indicated by the statement given out by the Prohibition Unit 
that between August, 1921, and October, 1923, 382 breweries 


494 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


had been reported for violations of the law. In Pennsylvania of 
about 100 breweries operating in the state, 62 were caught in 
violations of the law in 1924. 

Notwithstanding the numerous violations the Government has 
been very lax in enforcing penalties. It took away permits to 
make cereal beverages from some but in a number of cases these 
permits were restored after a short period. 

In the two years, July 1, 1922, to July 1, 1924, there were 45 
breweries seized. There were 100 convictions and pleas of 
guilty. Of these about three-fourths were pleas of guilty, many 
of which were called “‘consent” cases wherein the brewer con- 
sented to be closed for a specified time and accepted a fine, the 
maximum of which was $2,000, a mere pittance to a brewer. 
There were only 28 jail sentences, and the total fines imposed 
for all brewery violations amounted to only $201,000.”° 

Jail sentences for brewery violations for the entire period from 
July 1, 1921, to January, 1925, covering almost a presidential 
term, aggregated only 13 years. Only fourteen permanent in- 
junctions were obtained against breweries in the fiscal years 1924 
and 1925 combined. Laxness toward breweries appears not to 
have been due to a lack of authority given by the law as a few 
breweries have been dismantled and in one case brewing ma- 
chinery and equipment to the value of $225,000 were destroyed. 
The laxness was obviously due to the lack of the will to enforce 
on the part of the administration, 

8. The final feature of the Volstead Law to be discussed is 
the elaborate system of permits for regulating and controlling the 
manufacture, use and sale of alcohol for non-beverage purposes. 
No one was allowed to manufacture, sell, purchase or prescribe 
any liquor without first obtaining a permit, except for certain 
limited medical purposes. 

The Commissioner of Internal Revenue was given authority 
over all such permits and had the power, subject to the approval 
of the Secretary of the Treasury to prescribe the forms of all 
permits and applications. His power included the authority to 
issue permits and regulations for industrial alcohol plants, for 
breweries and wineries. He also had authority to compromise 
tax penalties. In short, these two officers possessed almost abso- 
lute control over all of the alcohol and alcoholic liquor existing 
in the country with the exception of private stocks possessed 
before the Volstead Act went into effect. Whether that control 


26 Information obtained from the Prohibition Unit. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 495 


was effective or not depended almost entirely upon the character 
of the administration. 


The Administration of the Law 


Prohibition was hindered from producing greater beneficent 
results not merely because of certain deficiencies in the law but 
to a much larger degree because of the lax manner in which it 
was administered. After sketching the machinery of the Pro- 
hibition Unit, some of the ways in which prohibition was impeded 
by the kind of administration it received will be enumerated. A 
consideration of these will go far toward accounting for the 
reaction from the high achievements of 1920. The advanced 
thinkers of the prohibition movement for decades have em- 
phasized that prohibition requires much more than law. The 
essential requirement is the administration of the law. 

A Prohibition Unit in the Bureau of Internal Revenue was 
established with a Commissioner of Prohibition, together with a 
series of state or regional directors and agents of various ranks. 
At least three different systems of organization have thus far 
been tried. By October, 1923, there were 1,522 prohibition field 
agents, and by February, 1924, the number was given as about 
1,600 to cover continental United States, the territories, the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, and distant possessions. There was one 
federal enforcement officer to 2,340 square miles of territory and 
about 70,000 population. In 1925 the number of prohibition 
agents was very largely reduced.’ 

The salaries of the prohibition agents were small, many of 
them received only $1680 a year. In 1925 the minimum was 
increased to $1860 but in the proposed budget for 1927 about 
eight-ninths of the agents and inspectors are scheduled to receive 
less than $2000, clearly not adequate considering the temptations 
and dangers. Forty-three prohibition agents have lost their lives, 
and in 1925 alone thirty-nine were injured in the performance of 
duty.”8 

27 Information in address of Prohibition Commissioner Haynes at Governors’ 
Conference, October, 1923; also, address of Judge J. J. Britt, counsel for the 
Prohibition Unit, before the National Republican Club, February, 1924, and 
other sources. 

28 Many of the statistics regarding the liquor situation and the enforcement 
situation of the government are found in the Annual Report of the Commissioner 
of Internal Revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1925, and in a pamphlet 
issued by the Prohibition Unit in April, 1925, entitled, Statistics Regarding 
Intoxicating Liquors. Other information has been obtained from bulletins issued 
by the Prohibition Unit and the Department of Justice. For budget proposals, 


see Message of the President of the United States Transmitting the Budget for 
1927, p. 890. 


496 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


In the fiscal year 1924 the prohibition agents made 68,161 
arrests. This appears to be a large number until it 1s remem- 
bered that in 1917 in Massachusetts alone there were 129,455 
arrests for drunkenness, and if throughout the country there had 
been the same number of arrests in proportion to the population 
as in high license-local option Massachusetts, the arrests for 
drunkenness in the nation that year would have aggregated 
2,583,000. 

Also when it is considered that 68,161 arrests is equivalent to 
only one arrest per agent for a period of over eight days, one is 
led to the conclusion that violations were not sufficiently numerous 
and open as to be easily detected or the agents were not very 
efficient, probably both of which were largely true. There was 
a feeling, moreover, which was emphasized by the Department of 
Justice, that too large a proportion of the arrests were for com- 
paratively minor offenses and that too many of those guilty of 
the more serious offenses escaped. 

Among the ways in which prohibition suffered from malad- 
ministration were: 

1. Dry laws were being administered by wet officials. When 
Mr. Harding became President he appointed as head of the de- 
partment responsible for enforcement one who for nearly forty 
years had been heavily interested in distilling. It is but stating 
a fact to say that a study of the statistical evidence indicates that 
social conditions relating to liquor began to get worse, as com- 
pared with 1920, soon after he was appointed. 

Below him was the Commissioner of Internal Revenue subse- 
quently very severely criticized for his administration. Below 
the latter, and a subordinate of his, was the Prohibition Com- 
missioner, known as a dry, but whose power was progressively 
reduced until he was practically deprived of administrative 
authority. In 1925 he was described by a Washington observer 
as being “hopelessly hedged about by adroit wet politicians.” ” 

The appointment of prohibition directors and agents in the 
various states was the subject of party patronage. Had the 
party in power been committed to prohibition as a party principle 
the party leaders would have been obligated to see that only those 
favorable to the principle of prohibition should be appointed. 
As it was, prohibition was not a party principle and, in the 
absence of presidential leadership, no standard of loyalty to the 
principle was required for appointment. Wet Senators and 


29 Gilbert O. Nations, in a weekly Washington letter to the California Voice, 
July 16, 1925. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 497 


Congressmen, or wet county chairmen or party leaders, were per- 
mitted to name enforcement officers. In some cases Congressmen 
who voted dry in Congress secured the appointment of wet 
officers. In at least a third of the states in 1921 and 1922 the 
leading prohibition officers were men known to have wet records. 

Although the United States had adopted a national law with 
the object of establishing a uniform national standard through- 
out the nation, the administration of the law so perverted this 
objective as to make enforcement substantially a matter of local 
option because it was administered to so large a degree by men 
owing their appointment to local political influences and subject 
to local political pressures. This was true not only of a large 
share of the prohibition agents but applied likewise to United 
States district attorneys, United States commissioners, United 
States marshals and others involved in the enforcement of the 
federal law. Furthermore, it was the worst form of local option 
—the option of the local politicians to determine the extent to 
which the law should be enforced, politicians, many of whom 
were personally wet, others of whom wanted to placate a wet 
element in their constituencies and all of whom belonged to 
political parties which sought wet votes as well as dry ones. 

There were many cases of appointments opposed by the better 
citizens. One United States judge was appointed notwithstand- 
ing he had recently been a member of the Association Against 
the Prohibition Amendment. In the District of Columbia a 
police judge who had been exceedingly lax toward bootleggers 
was reappointed against the protests of the combined temperance 
forces of the District. In some cases to obtain appointments as 
prohibition agents required the approval of politicians notoriously 
wet, and it was said in one section the approval of two brewers 
was essential. Space prevents the enumeration of a long list of 
disgraceful appointments. In an inquiry made in 1925 among 
six hundred government employees having to do with prohibition 
enforcement, the results of which were published in the Dearborn 
Independent, only five per cent stated that they believed in pro- 
hibition. 

Still worse, many of the leading officials at the head of the 
nation did not respect the principle. In 1923 President Harding 
was understood to have taken a position in favor of total ab- 
stinence but prior to that time it was currently reported in Wash- 
ington that not only the President but also a number of members 
of his Cabinet failed to set an example of abstinence from liquor, 
the traffic in which had been prohibited by the Constitution the 


498 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


President had sworn to preserve, protect and defend. So glaring 
did the failure of high government officials to respect the Con- 
stitution become that when Congressman Upshaw of Georgia, 
who had given much of his life to the cause of prohibition, in an 
address in the House of Representatives on December 20, 1922, 
uttered a ringing call for sober officials and declared that, “Any 
one who swears allegiance to the Constitution and then helps a 
bootlegger to trample that Constitution underfoot is unworthy 
to hold any office under the sun,” that address received unusual 
demonstrations of approval throughout the country. 

2. A number of aggressive dry officials were removed from 
office. One notable case was the removal of Harold D. Wilson, 
of Massachusetts, a capable and efficient officer, who believed in 
enforcing the law against the rich and politically powerful as 
well as against the ignorant foreigners. In the course of his 
duties he raided a banquet being given to the Governor of the 
state, which was attended by many prominent politicians, and 
seized a large quantity of liquor which was being served in an 
adjoining room. Subsequently Mr. Wilson wrote an able and 
discerning book entitled, Dry Laws and Wet Politicians. 

3. One complaint against federal administration was that, 
in some instances at least, when a conscientious agent had suc- 
ceeded in getting evidence against the men higher up, especially 
those with political influence, the agent would be transferred to a 
distant point where he would be comparatively innocuous. In 
September, 1923, the Philadelphia North American, one of the 
most vigorous supporters of prohibition of any metropolitan 
daily paper in the East, declared: 


Whenever prohibition agents grow dangerous the law breakers 
have been able through politicians to reach influential ears in the 
internal revenue bureau and cause a check. 


4. Many of the United States district attorneys were regarded 
as decidedly lax in the prosecution of liquor cases. The prohibi- 
tion agents who gathered evidence against violators were only 
a minor fractional factor in law enforcement. Their work 
amounted to little unless their evidence was used in the prosecu- 
tion of cases and such prompt and vigorous penalties imposed as 
would deter the violators. In this the active cooperation of the 
United States attorneys and judges was essential. 

In many cases the federal prohibition agents, a number of 
whom were faithful public servants, had good ground for com- 
plaint that the United States attorneys would not take an interest 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 499 


in prosecuting cases. This was conspicuously true in brewery 
cases, 

If the remedy for flagrant violations was to libel a brewery, 
a prohibition agent could make no headway unless he had the co- 
operation of the United States district attorney. Similarly if 
the effective remedy was an injunction or a padlock, the agent 
could not succeed unless he had the support of the United States 
attorney, unless the cases were taken into the state courts, which 
was sometimes done in some sections. 

The records of the Department of Justice showed a great dif- 
ference in enforcement in the territory of different United States 
district attorneys. In some states there was a decided contrast 
between two judicial districts in the same state. 

By the system of decentralized administration put into opera- 
tion by the Treasury Department late in 1925 the work of the 
prohibition agents in getting evidence was correlated with, and 
practically subordinated to, the work of the district attorneys in 
using evidence. The prohibition administrative districts were 
each made to be coterminous with a group of judicial districts and 
the prohibition officers were instructed to work in harmony with 
the district attorneys. It was of little value to obtain evidence 
unless it would be used by the district attorneys. These had the 
power practically to decide who should be prosecuted and who 
should not be. Excuse was made that the courts were too con- 
gested to try all cases and the district attorneys were compelled 
to choose who should be punished. This power, which was sub- 
stantially that of being able to bestow selective immunity, was an 
exceedingly dangerous one, especially when exercised by officials 
so highly political. There was a temptation, especially for the less 
scrupulous, those who had been trained in, or associated with 
liquor politics, to barter immunity for political influence or, as has 
often been done by local officials, to use their authority to compel 
the lawless element to support the party in power. 

5. Another obstacle to enforcement was the attitude of some 
of the United States judges. A report of a Congressional com- 
mittee in 1925 stated that there was much evidence that the 
penalties imposed were inadequate. In one federal judicial dis- 
trict the average jail sentence was three-tenths of one day. In 
another the average jail sentence was three days. In another 
district, with a visiting judge sitting, out of 256 cases the average 
fine was $24. Nine prisoners were fined $5, 132 were fined $10 
each, five received $15 fines, 17 were fined $20, and 30, $25. 
Only 63 of the 256 were fined more than $25 and the maximum 


500 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


fine was $200 levied on two prisoners. Jail sentences were given 
to 12 culprits of whom two received 30 days each. Two others 
10 days, one 5 days, and seven were sentenced to one day in jail. 
The total amount of jail sentences was 46 days or an average 
of less than four days each for the 12 who were sentenced, or 
Jess than one-fifth of a day for each of those who were guilty.*? 

6. Perhaps the most serious criticism of the government was 
in respect to the administration of the permit system. No liquor 
or alcohol could be legally manufactured, stored, transported or 
sold without a federal permit. 

The success or failure in controlling the source of supply de- 
pended upon the administration of the permit system. The 
federal government had full and complete responsibility. It was 
the government’s duty to dam up the sources of supply. If it per- 
mitted a flood of alcohol to be let loose to be used as a supply 
of beverage liquor, it rendered exceedingly difficult the stopping 
of local and lesser violations of law. Enforcement officers would 
have great difficulty in mopping up the wetness if a breach in the 
dike was allowed to remain unrepaired. 

There were about twenty different classes of permits issued and 
there were as many as 157,000 permits outstanding. Some of the 
important branches of the permit system related to distilled spirits, 
the breweries, pure alcohol, denatured alcohol and wines. 

A. With respect to distilled spirits, in 1921 there were 9,681,- 
199 gallons, chiefly whisky, withdrawn. Whisky in bond was 
gotten under reasonably good control following the action of 
Congress providing for the concentration of the bonded whisky 
from nearly three hundred warehouses into about twenty-eight. 
In 1925 the tax-paid withdrawals were 1,972,058 gallons, with a 
little less than 30,000,000 gallons left in the warehouses. The 
withdrawals of distilled spirits, which in 1913 to 1916 had aver- 
aged 135,000,000 gallons annually, were thus reduced to less 
than 2,000,000 gallons. 

B. The regulations respecting breweries were exceedingly un- 
satisfactory as hereinbefore discussed. Still worse was the situa- 
tion regarding denatured alcohol. There were three classes of 
alcohol available. First, pure alcohol on which a tax of $2.20 
per proof gallon was required; second, completely denatured alco- 
hol, and, third, specially denatured alcohol. 

There was an amazing increase in the production of denatured 


80 Survey of the Alcoholic Liquor Trafic and the Enforcement of the Eighteenth 
Amendment, Report of Subcommittee on Alcoholic Liquor Traffic, House of 
Representatives, Sixty-eighth Congress, Second Session, 1025, pp. 5-6. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 501 


alcohol. The number of proof gallons of alcohol withdrawn 
for denaturation increased from 38,000,000 gallons in 1921 to 
148,000,000 gallons in 1925. Perhaps about 18,000,000 gallons 
of the increase can be accounted for by the diversion from tax- 
paid alcohol, which decreased from 26 to 8 millions in the same 
period. But taking all three classes of industrial alcohol there 
was an increase of 142 per cent in four years. Specially de- 
natured alcohol increased from less than 10,000,000 wine gallons 
in 1921 to nearly 35,000,000 in 1925. 

There were seven different formulas used in making com- 
pletely denatured alcohol, and about fifty in making specially de- 
natured alcohol. In some of these formulas permitted by the 
Internal Revenue Bureau much of the denaturant could easily 
be removed so that the alcohol was used in the illicit trade. Some 
of the illicit sellers gave to each customer directions for removing 
the denaturant. A Congressional committee investigating the 
question estimated that 6,000,000 gallons of denatured alcohol 
were diverted to the bootleg trade in 1924. In April, 1926, the 
chief chemist of the Prohibition Unit estimated that between 
thirteen and fourteen million gallons were so diverted. Denatured 
alcohol was by far the chief source of supply for the illicit traffic 
and the responsibility for such a large leakage was directly upon 
the administration of the Treasury Department. 

Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania, who has made a. loyal and 
courageous effort to enforce the law, having found that one of his 
greatest obstacles was the bootleg supply permitted by federal 
authority to get out in the form of denatured, or theoretically 
denatured, alcohol, made numerous investigations in his state and 
brought to light a sickening array of violations many of which 
might have been prevented or stopped if the federal administra- 
tion had been efficient. 

In his message on law enforcement to the General Assembly 
of Pennsylvania in February, 1925, Governor Pinchot said: 


In the two years ending on June 30, 1923, the amount of specially 
denatured alcohol removed and disposed of in the Philadelphia 
district increased from less than 800,000 gallons to more than 
5,000,000 gallons. . . . This enormous production and distribution 
of specially denatured alcohol is at the present time checked by no 
records which are effective to prevent its passage in huge quantities 
into the bootleg trade. 


He stated that federal permits had been issued to 151 manu- 
facturers in Philadelphia authorizing them to make toilet waters, 
hair tonics and tobacco sprays. Of these nearly every one did his 


502 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


supposed manufacturing in a single small room or small building 
utterly inadequate in size and equipment for the business alleged 
to be conducted in it. Five permittees were authorized to with- 
draw over 655,000 gallons in a single year. The 151 in the 
first ten months of 1924 withdrew more than 1,100,000 gallons 
of specially denatured alcohol, “which is probably alcohol enough 
to make toilet water, hair tonic and tobacco sprays for the people 
of the whole world.” 


Nine permittees claimed to have used and sold more than 185,000 
gallons of denatured alcohol in tobacco sprays during the first ten 
months of 1924. I am informed that according to the formula used 
by the largest manufacturers of tobacco in the country this was 
tobacco spray enough to have treated twice over the whole tobacco 
production of the United States in 1924, and half the production of 
the entire world. 


Governor Pinchot further stated that of five men who were 
given permits to withdraw 590,000 gallons, four were without 
published rating with the leading mercantile agencies, and one 
was rated at from $500 to $1000. The permits of these had 
been revoked but subsequently reinstated. Of the 130 manufac- 
turers cited in 1924 for violation of law the permits of only 22 
had been permanently revoked of which 17 made no defense, 
and all these were minor offenders. The big violators whose per- 
mits were revoked had them restored. 

In the Philadelphia district, of 61 permittees, each authorized 
to withdraw over 1,000 gallons of specially denatured alcohol 
each month, and altogether to withdraw 2,671,000 gallons a year, 
53 had been cited from one to three times for violation of the law 
but only 15 had been put out of business. 

In 1925 in New York City the United States district attorney 
stated that there were at least 1,000 persons holding permits for 
withdrawal of denatured alcohol for the manufacture of per- 
fumes. Nationally known legitimate makers used from 40 to 
120 barrels a month while persons of whom the public had never 
heard withdrew from 300 to 1,000 barrels each for the alleged 
manufacture of perfumes. 

The Philadelphia North American in January, 1924, was ap- 
parently justified when it declared: ‘A scandal even more ex- 
tensive and dangerous than the immunity of lawbreaking brew- 
eries is the illicit traffic in denatured alcohol.” During 1924 and 
1925 the scandal appeared to become worse. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 503 


In November, 1925, Governor Pinchot in a letter to the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury stated that he was prepared to give the 
details of more than 100 violations of law by holders of federal 
permits for specially denatured alcohol. He said that the cases 
showed, among other things, that the government had: 


1. Granted permits to companies officered by known violators of 
the law; 

2. It had granted permits to companies whose equipment made 
it physically impossible for them to manufacture alcohol in the 
quantities the permits called for; 

3. The government had restored permits to offending permittees 
who were shown to have falsified their records and generally to 
have violated the law and the regulations; 

4. The government had refused to cancel permits when the 
lawbreakers had finally been indicted; 

5. It had been a habit of federal officials not to collect on the 
bonds of lawbreaking permittees ; and 

6. The final decisions relative to these permits were not made by 
federal officers in Philadelphia but by government officials in 
Washington. | 


Governor Pinchot added that the men in Washington respon- 
sible for granting or restoring permits under such conditions 
have no proper place in the government service. 

The administration of the permit system was so bad that even 
the Democratic national platform of 1924 arraigned the Re- 
publicans by declaring: 

The Republican administration has failed to enforce the pro- 
hibition law, is guilty of trafficking in liquor permits and has become 
the protector of violators of the law. 


7. Another respect in which action of federal administrative 
authorities opened the way to the violation of the Eighteenth 
Amendment was with regard to the making of wine. The In- 
ternal Revenue regulations were such as to give the widespread 
impression that by filling out a certain blank form furnished by 
the Internal Revenue Bureau any person could make 200 gallons 
of wine. 

The wording seemed to imply permission to make 200 gallons. 
This was taken advantage of by foreigners especially, and in the 
grape growing sections, with the result that large quantities of 
wine were made. It was stated that between 40,000 and 50,000 
of these so-called permits were issued in California alone, which 
at 200 gallons each meant a large amount. Late in 1925 this 


504 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


system was discontinued.** Aside from the home-made wine, 
that permitted to be made by the wineries was extra liberal in 
quantity. 

8. The federal government did not provide adequate facilities 
for prosecuting the violators of the Eighteenth Amendment. Al- 
though facts gathered by the Department of Justice and presented 
to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1922 revealed that the 
criminal business of the federal courts had increased about 800 
per cent since 1912 and had increased from 8 to 4o per cent 
of the total cases, only about 25 per cent additional federal 
judges were provided. 

Based upon the cases pending on June 30, 1921, the Depart- 
ment of Justice reported that only 18 per cent of the criminal 
cases were prohibition cases and of the total cases in the federal 
courts only eight per cent were prohibition cases. It was very 
evident that aside from the prohibition cases there was great need 
for increased court facilities. 

There was also great need for removing the barnacles which 
had become attached to criminal law procedure. The thoughtful 
public were becoming exasperated by the legal technicalities, the 
long-drawn-out trials, the much speechmaking in court, the over- 
solicitude for criminals rather than a predominant interest in 
the welfare of society, and the many avenues for the guilty to 
escape. : 

Statistics given out by the Department of Justice and the Pro- 
hibition Unit show that in the two-year period, 1923 and 1924, 
a total of 94,899 criminal prosecutions for violation of liquor laws 
were begun in the federal courts. The total number of convic- 
tions was 71,248. Of these 62,618, or 88 per cent, were ob- 
tained through pleas of guilty, which meant that the defendants 
were commonly let off with a light fine or small penalty. In 
some courts district attorneys conducted “bargain days” in which 
offenders by pleading guilty were let off with light fines, hun- 
dreds of cases being disposed of within a few days. 

There were only 8,630 convictions during the two years in 
cases where the defendants made a fight. In other words, taking 
the United States as a whole, the number of convictions in con- 
tested cases in federal courts was equivalent to an average of 
one conviction to a county once in a period of eight and one- 
half months. In 1925 they were still fewer, one to a county in 
ten and one-half months. The preposterously small number was 


81 Oliver W. Stewart, “Wine Making in the Home Unfairly Charged to the 
Volstead Law”; National Enquirer, June 4, 1925. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 ° 505 


not due to the lack of public sentiment or the failure of juries 
to convict. These voted convictions in about three-fourths of the 
cases. It was due chiefly to the lack of an aggressive enforce- 
ment policy by the party in power. 

In the two years 14,567 cases were nolle-prossed or dis- 
missed. The average fine imposed was $187 but the average 
collected was only $127 which was equal to only about one-eighth 
of the customary high license fee in the pre-prohibition period. 
The average jail sentence was 31 days. In 1925 it was 43 days, 
less than one-fourth of the weak penalty permitted by the Vol- 
stead Act for first offenders. 

The light penalties, the lack of certainty and promptitude of 
punishment, the many avenues of escape and the lack of earnest- 
ness on the part of the higher officers of the government resulted 
in failure to deter the lawless. 

g. In addition to the glaring deficiencies in the federal ad- 
ministration, local government in many sections was under the 
domination of the old liquor politics and the office-holders con- 
tinued wet. Volumes could be written regarding the infamous 
political conditions in various parts of the country. Out of four- 
teen counties in Ohio visited by the writer in 1924, a state which 
on its last vote in 1922 gave a dry majority of 189,472, in only 
three counties were the three officers most essential in law en- 
forcement, sheriff, prosecuting attorney and county judge, classed 
as dry. 

In a section of a southern state having a Democratic Governor 
and a Republican Congressman this situation was found in 1922. 
The United States marshal was a former bootlegger. The internal 
revenue collector was an ex-saloon-keeper. A deputy sheriff 
was reported to be receiving a dollar a gallon for transporting 
liquor from moonshiners in the outlying districts into the city. 
The Congressman, although he had voted dry in Congress, 
sought to have appointed as the chief prohibition officer in that 
section a man who had been known as a bootlegger. In this 
he was frustrated only after the good citizens had made a vigor- 
ous fight at Washington. Some of the subordinate federal pro- 
hibition officers were reported to be reselling to bootleggers liquor 
which they had captured. 

In another southern state, which had voted for prohibition by 
a vote of more than two to one, a faithful prohibition agent be- 
gan to be aggressive in doing his duty in enforcement. He re- 
ceived three letters cautioning him to go easy. One was from 
the state prohibition director, one was from the Republican na- 


506 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


tional committeeman who controlled the distribution of the fed- 
eral patronage in that state, and the third was from a former 
Democratic Governor. Bipartisan politics was protecting the 
criminals. 

In a border state, where also the people had voted for prohibi- 
tion by a vote of more than two to one, the following situation 
was found in 1924. The United States Senator of the dominant 
party was wet. The United States judge was wet, a federal 
grand juryman stating that when the jury finished its work one 
night the judge’s breath was strong with liquor. The United 
States marshal was wet. The chief federal prohibition officer 
was said to sell liquor himself and to receive protection money 
from violators. A part of this was supposed to go to the support 
of the political machine. Federal prohibition officers were said 
to be allowing liquor to be smuggled across the border for a 
rake-off of Sto acase. In the state capital the local officers were 
Democratic and wet. The federal officers were Republican and 
wet and both parties were competing for the wet vote. If arrests 
were made the offenders were let off. Thus did the old type of 
politics nullify the Constitution. 

In another state, although the Governor was dry, having been 
elected on the prohibition issue, local government in many sec- 
tions continued under the control of the old wet politics to such a 
degree that it was found that only one man in seventy of those 
arrested for violation of the prohibition laws was sent to prison 
for as much as one year. 

10. Notwithstanding that one of the great objectives in plac- 
ing prohibition in the Constitution was to establish a uniform 
national standard and that it is the high duty of the national gov- 
ernment to see that the Constitution is carried into effect, the 
administrations of three Presidents thus far have made no 
appropriate efforts to effectuate that standard. Ifa state failed to 
respect the Eighteenth Amendment the federal administration re- 
mained indifferent and failed to provide adequate means for 
enforcement. 

New York in 1923 repealed its state enforcement act, the only 
state which has done so. Thereafter it was impossible to utilize 
the state courts to help enforce the prohibition laws. Notwith- 
standing that New York City with its large foreign element is 
one of the most difficult places to enforce the laws, in late 1925 
the federal government provided only about 150 federal prohibi- 
tion agents to cover all of Greater New York, Long Island, a 
territory extending 125 miles up the Hudson and all of Con- 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 507 


necticut, comprising in all about nine million people. Only about 
one-half of these agents were doing enforcement work proper. 
The rest were handling alcohol permits, drug store permits, and 
so forth. 

Still worse, federal court facilities for the trial of cases were 
not provided. The United States district attorney for the 
Southern District of New York in 1925 was enabled to have only 
about one-third of the time of one judge to try prohibition cases. 
This was absolutely the only court, national, state or local, capable 
of trying cases and imposing penalties for a district including 
Manhattan, the Bronx and a territory 12 5 miles up the Hudson 
comprising over four and a quarter million people. 

The Republican federal administration’s shameful abdication 
of responsibility for enforcement was equalled only by the 
Democratic state administration’s attempted nullification as a 
factor in bringing constitutional prohibition into disrepute in the 
leading city and preeminent publicity center of the nation. | 

11. The manner in which the Amendment was administered 
thus violated in several respects the fundamental purposes of pro- 
hibition. It failed to shut off the source of supply by permitting 
brewers to manufacture beer and by permitting industrial alcohol 
to be diverted. It failed to maintain a national standard both 
by failing to provide the means for enforcement in recalcitrant 
sections and by the system of appointment of federal officers 
which subjected federal enforcement practically to the will of the 
local politicians. 

12. This atrocious type of administration not only tended 
to nullify the Constitution and to bring prohibition into disrepute 
but it encouraged the lawless elements and gave an impetus to 
lawlessness. The impression became general that the government 
was making no earnest, aggressive, comprehensive effort to make 
prohibition effective. This gave encouragement to the law- 
violators, the brewers, the rum runners, the bootleggers and 
the rest of the horde of lawless and criminal elements. They 
ignored the law and trampled upon the Constitution. They came 
with an onrush bent on having a heyday of sport with the shorn 
Samson—the law without a party to enforce it. 

13. This type of administration encouraged the wets to keep 
up their noisy propaganda and stimulated them to continue their 
political activities. Although they were not able to repeal the 
law, they sought to bring it into disrepute through maladminis- 
tration. They made exaggerated claims as to the number of 


508 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


voters they could control and intimidated the politicians and 
public officials. 


The Political System Underlying Prohibition 


Why was it that the administration of this most beneficent law 
was so unsatisfactory ? 

Why was it that as early as 1923 the administration of national 
prohibition was referred to as a national scandal? 

Why was it that the enforcement situation had become so 
critical that Governor Pinchot declared at the national con- 
vention of the Anti-Saloon League in January, 1924, and reiter- 
ated it at a similar convention in November, 1925, that the 
Eighteenth Amendment had been betrayed and that “‘no sincere, 
intelligent and concerted nation-wide effort has ever been made 
to enforce it?” 

Why was it that notwithstanding the marvelous and un- 
precedented economic and social benefits which have been ex- 
perienced from even poorly enforced prohibition—benefits which 
should have appealed overwhelmingly to thoughtful statesmen— 
they were almost totally ignored by the majority of men in public 
life? 

Why was it that, with a few worthy exceptions, there was a 
lack of sincerity, of conviction upon this question, and of out- 
standing moral power among those who were prominent in 
politics ? 

Why was it that although over five and a half million voters 
had voted for prohibition in the thirty-two states which had held 
popular elections, comprising nearly 57 per cent of those voting, 
the leading officers who were chosen to administer the law were 
almost exclusively those who were pointed to as having never 
voted for prohibition, as having not been interested in it and some 
of whom acknowledged that they had been drinkers since the 
Amendment had been in force? Were there none of the five and 
a half millions who were qualified? 

Why was it that although Congress was reported to be growing 
drier following each successive election that only one outstand- 
ing dry measure was passed in the seven years following the 
enactment of the Volstead Act? 

Why was it that although Congress was classed as dry, in the 
Sixty-ninth Congress, organized in December, 1925, the three 
most strategic and powerful positions in the House were as- 
signed to men with decidedly wet records, the positions of 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 509 


Speaker, Majority Floor Leader and the Chairman of the Judi- 
ciary Committee? 

Why was it that the Cabinet officers appointed to head the two 
most important departments responsible for carrying prohibition 
into effect were men with records decidedly anti-prohibition ° 

Why was it that when the President of the United States 
in a budget message uttered the most favorable words yet con- 
tained in a presidential message, he accompanied these words by a 
budget recommendation which provided for a reduction of several 
hundred thousand dollars in the appropriation for the Prohibition 
Unit? 

Certainly there must have been some more fundamental reason 
for these conditions than appears upon the surface. Some reasons 
commonly or superficially given should be eliminated. These con- 
ditions cannot be explained by the personal attitude of certain 
office-holders. Occupants of key offices such as the Presidency 
or the Attorney-Generalship would change but the quality of the 
administration continued largely the same. They were not due 
to a lack of education. Education is important, and should be 
continued, but “every schoolboy knows’ that the liquor traffic is 
bad and that prohibition is in the Constitution and should be 
enforced. They were not due to a lack of public sentiment upon 
this question. As hereinbefore described, some of the worst ad- 
ministration prevailed in those states which had voted more than 
two to one for prohibition. The difficulty was that public senti- 
ment was not applied to the government in such a manner as to 
control the government and cause it to function effectively. 

A fundamental reason for the scandalous, yea, despicable, 
administrative situation can be found in the political system 
which underlies the administration of prohibition—in the com- 
position of our politics. 

The crux of the matter is that although we have placed prohibi- 
tion in the Constitution, we have continued a political system 
under which both parties are so composed that they do not give 
an honest and sincere administration of prohibition, Both are 
composed of supporters and opponents of prohibition and both 
are unwilling to alienate the anti-prohibition fraction of their 
membership. 

Let us consider briefly the outstanding political factors in the 
situation : 

1. No study of the present situation can ignore the historical 
background of the tremendous influence which the liquor power 
wielded in American politics for more than half a century. It 


510 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


debauched voters in large numbers, plumped their votes in great 
masses, supplied campaign funds, wielded the balance of power, 
made alliances with party machines, in some sections took full 
command of the parties and in many ways, more fully discussed in 
other chapters, exercised an influence in politics as did no other 
interest. Both parties were under the domination of the liquor 
power.*” 

2. The liquor power did not accept defeat even with the plac- 
ing of prohibition in the Constitution. It tefused to respect the 
Constitution. It treated the Eighteenth Amendment as a “scrap 
of paper.” Most of the breweries remained intact, having been 
permitted, very unwisely, by the Volstead Law to make regular 
beer, ostensibly with a view to dealcoholization. Since 1862 the 
breweries had been the chief factor in liquor politics and liquor 
aggression. Most of the breweries continued, some as makers 
of cereal beverages. Hundreds were caught in violating the law, 
some were dormant so far as manufacture was concerned but 
practically all were components of a vicious power which carried 
on a continuous assault against prohibition. Under various 
aliases they carried on a propaganda for some modification which 
would permit the return of beer. The saloon as a political center 
had been practically eliminated, but the outlawed liquor power 
sought to devise new methods of corralling votes. 

Continued political activity was an inherent and preeminent 
part of the program of the wets not only because it was only 
through politics that they could possibly hope to ultimately obtain 
some kind of modification, but current politics was the means 
whereby they could weaken enforcement, provide a greater 
opportunity for the sale of liquor and bring prohibition into 
disrepute. By trying to make voters dissatisfied with the 
kind of prohibition which was apparent, they hoped to incite 
them against it and add to the number of voters who could be 
utilized in the advancement of their schemes. Starting with their 
long-seated position of power in party councils and long ex- 
perience in politics they sought to prevent effective enforcement. 
Among other things they intimidated the politicians. 

In 1924 three wet organizations formed a joint committee 
with some officers of the American Federation of Labor looking 
towards the modification of the Volstead Act and they claimed 
that they could control seven million votes. They threatened to 
wield the balance of power in pivotal states in the presidential 


82 For a fuller discussion of the liquor power in politics, see infra, Chapter 
XXVII, 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 511 


election. It is known that early in 1924 on at least two occasions 
representatives of prominent wet organizations—one with a 
name signifying opposition to a part of the Constitution—were 
admitted to conference with the President in the White House.*? 
Apparently they sought to intimidate the President of the United 
States on the eve Sf: a presidential campaign. 

3. Likewise the present situation cannot be interpreted prop- 
erly without taking into consideration the political methods by 
which prohibition was adopted. In the adoption of state prohib- 
itory legislation the predominant method was the use of the 
referendum in which the parties played only a very small part. 
In the adoption of national constitutional prohibition the chief 
political objective was to elect Congressmen who would vote to 
submit and legislators who would vote to ratify. The political 
method was known as the omni-partisan method. The Anti- 
Saloon League was its chief advocate and it advised people to 
stay in their own parties and work for individual dry candidates. 
It distinctly disavowed any desire to have either party champion 
prohibition as a party measure.° 

As a result neither party was committed to prohibition. Upon 
other leading national questions which required national action 
the parties generally made some commitment. But upon pro- 
hibition there was no commitment. 

4. There was no national union of the moral forces to secure 
control of the administration of the government. Under the 
omni-partisan method such union as was brought about was 
chiefly within the parties in the primaries and within districts and 
states. In the one-party states and districts, where the direct 
primary prevailed or where the sentiment was overwhelmingly 
dry, in each of which conditions the wets were unable to wield 
the balance of power, this method resulted in the election of a 
good many individual legislators. But it was unsuited to the task 
of electing the whole corps of officers needed, the very thing 
which it is a prominent function of the party to encompass.** 

There having been no national political union and the voters 
having been advised to stay in their own parties the moral forces 
continued to be divided between the parties which were so com- 
posed that in each party the influence of the dry voters was 
counteracted by an aggressive opposing wet interest within the 
same party. 


83 Record of White House appointments published in the Washington papers 
supplemented by personal inquiry by the writer. 

84 For a discussion of the omni-partisan plan, see Chapter XXI. 

35 For a study of the function of parties, see Chapter XXIX. 


512 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


In fact the drys were yoked in party membership with the wets, 
so yoked that they were unable to secure a satisfactory enforce- 
ment of the law. The wet element practically placed a veto 
upon aggressive enforcement. This meant inaction, lax enforce- 
ment, or worse, and the failure to achieve the proper degree of 
the benefits of prohibition. Notwithstanding that the drys com- 
prised a majority, the difficulty was in the methods used and in 
the fact that the drys were not so organized as to control the 
government. 

5. The parties remained substantially as they were before pro- 
hibition, The party composition was not greatly changed. 
Fkach party was composed of both elements, the drys and the 
wets. In the case of both parties the party composition was such 
that the party was unwilling to enforce the law to the extent of 
driving out the wet vote. 

Lifelong aggressive wets» could hold the highest appointive 
positions such as Cabinet offices, as well as those most loyal to 
the Constitution. In fact they were preferred, as they would be 
less likely to alienate mobile wet votes. 

6. Each party was radically divided upon the question of 
prohibition, Prohibition received no united support from either 
party, one of which administered the government. Neither party 
was responsible for prohibition. It was an outside affair so far 
as the party, the very organization responsible for the administra- 
tion of the government, was concerned. Prohibition had been 
placed upon the statute book and in the Constitution outside of 
party. It was the law and it was the duty of the party in power 
to enforce it, but in many ways the party leaders manifested their 
feeling that it was an unpleasant duty which they were dis- 
inclined to perform. 

7. Prohibition was looked upon as a troublesome question 
politically. Whether an administration enforced it or failed to 
enforce it, it was bound to alienate some voters. But the wet 
voters were more easily alienated. They would leave on less 
provocation. They were more mobile, more bossible, more cor- 
ruptible, were more easily manipulated. They were more likely 
to go in a body. 

The typical political attitude was to make such concessions 
to both sides as seemed to be necessary. This took the form, as 
it had done frequently in the history of prohibition, of giving the 
drys the law and the wets the administration. A policy of inac- 
tion and excuses was generally easier and less dangerous than 
a policy of aggressive enforcement. The result was, the desire 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 513 


to keep from alienating the wets resulted in paralyzing the arm 
of the government. 

8. Under our present political system the objective of both 
parties is to carry the close states, especially those with a large 
electoral vote. Several of these states are the leading wet states. 
' Each party is afraid of alienating a wet balance of power in cer- 
tain strategic close states. 

Each party as at present composed is unable to give prohibition 
a sincere and effective support. The consequence is, we experi- 
ence the poor administration heretofore described. Some people 
assume that this is because prohibition is unenforceable whereas 
the poor administration is due primarily to the composition of the 
political system underlying prohibition and to the fact that the 
prohibition forces have not finished their work. 

9. Notwithstanding that prohibition is a part of the Constitu- 
tion, the party in power, being dependent upon the wet vote in 
close states for its margin of plurality, does not enforce this part 
of the Constitution beyond the point where, in the view of the 
party leaders, the enforcing might endanger the party. Prohibi- 
tion has been sacrificed for the sake of party interest. 

Notwithstanding that lax enforcement means a reign of law- 
lessness, the poisoning and destruction of citizens, disrespect for 
the Constitution and a tendency toward anarchy, the major parties 
choose to subserve the votes of an outlaw and criminal traffic 
by such a lax enforcement. 

Furthermore, and deplorable though it is, multitudes of good 
citizens, disappointed, discouraged, bewildered and seeming to 
know not what else to do, continue to vote for such parties. 

10. A study of Prohibition in the United States fails at the 
most crucial point if it fails to appreciate that prohibition as 
thus far experienced has been without the support of that pre- 
eminent, all pervading and most essential organ of government, 
the political party in power. Prohibition thus far has been playing 
Hamlet with Hamlet left out. 

11. The features of maladministration and duplicity of poli- 
ticians and political leaders are by no means new in the prohibi- 
tion movement. They have been characteristic not merely of the 
period 1920-1925. They have been common, widespread and 
persistent from 1851 down, as can be discerned in some of the 
earlier chapters of this book. 

It was a similar composition of our political system, and the 
lack of a union in a political party to administer the government, 
which underlay the lack of greater success of the prohibition 


B14 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


movements of the fifties and the eighties and which drove the 
great thinkers and leaders of the movement, like Neal Dow, 
John Russell, John B. Finch, John P. St. John, Frances E. Wil- 
lard and many others to the earnest championship of the Pro- 
hibition party. 

Today their philosophy is just as sound as ever before and 
more worthy of acceptance because more fully demonstrated by 
the experience of the years. 

12. In order to prevent the repetition of the unsatisfactory 
and discouraging type of administration which prevailed most of 
the time for over half a century in Maine and for about a 
quarter of a century in Kansas, a type of administration which 
was a leading factor in repealing prohibition in all but one of the 
fifteen other states which adopted it prior to 1907, and which is 
critically endangering the success of constitutional prohibition at 
the present moment, the fundamental lesson of prohibition history 
is that, above all, prohibition needs a party in power committed 
to it as a matter of principle.* 

13. The work of prohibition is but fractionally completed. 
Said Frances E. Willard forty years ago, in 188s: 


We have discovered that the saloon is entrenched in politics even 
more firmly than in law.3? 


We have driven the saloon from its protection in law but it 
remains entrenched in politics to make a mockery of the law. 

14. T’o complete the work of making national prohibition 
effective : 

A. There needs to be a reorganization of our politics so that 
the liquor power shall be completely dislodged from politics as 
well as from law. 

B. There needs to be a realignment of the voters so that 
those who believe in upholding the great moral provision of the 
Constitution shall not be yoked with those who seek to nullify 
it. Those who believe prohibition is right should cease voting 
with those who believe it is wrong. 

C. There needs to be a union, a coming together into a 
political party, of the multitudes who believe in prohibition, who 
believe in the Constitution, who believe in a government of law 
and order, who believe in America’s capacity to achieve a great 
moral advance, that they may obtain control of the whole 
government. 


86 For a fuller discussion of Prohibition and the American Governmental 
System, see Chapter XXIX, 
87 For the political messages of Frances E., Willard, see Chapter XVI. 


NATIONAL PROHIBITION—1920-1925 515 


D. There needs to be a party which is not dependent upon the 
liquor element for an essential component part of its plurality. 

E. There needs to be a party which will elect a President com- 
mitted to prohibition by personal conviction and party prin- 
ciple, a President abounding in capacity to use his tremendous 
power as the head of the administration, as the leader of his 
party and as the leader of the nation in behalf of this great 
Cause. 

F. There needs to be a regeneration of our politics. There 
needs to be the transforming power of a great national political 
ideal which will purify politics and make it a worthy instrument 
of attaining the transcendent ideals of which the Prohibitionists 
long have dreamed—a nobler citizenship, a better world here and 
now, the coming nearer of the Kingdom of God on earth.* 


38 For bibliography, see the close of Chapter XXIV. 


le 


III. 


IV. 


Chapter X XVI 


THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT AND 
PROHIBITION 


The Four Groups of Decisions 


Those upholding the principle of prohibition and establish- 
ing its constitutionality. 

The License Cases of 1847. 

Bartemeyer v. Iowa. 

Beer Co. v. Massachusetts. 

Foster v. Kansas. 

Crowley v. Christensen. 

Crane v. Campbell. 

Samuels v. McCurdy. 

The Question of Compensation. 

Mugler v. Kansas. 

Finch’s preceding argument. 

Three points of the Great Decision: 
Manufacture for private use or export. 
Compensation. 

Abatement of Nuisances and In junction. 
The Interstate Commerce Cases. 

Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company. 

Leisy v. Hardin, the Original Package Decision. 

The Wilson Law: 

In re Rahrer. 
Rhodes v. Iowa. 
Later Decisions upholding National Legislation. 

Upholding the Webb-Kenyon Law. 

James Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland 
Railroad Co. 
Sustaining the Reed Amendment. 
United States v. Hill. 
United States v. Simpson. 

War Time Prohibition Constitutional. 

Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries, 
516 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 517 


Upholding the Volstead Law. 
Jacob Ruppert v. Caffey. 
Upholding the Method of Ratification of the Eighteenth 
and Nineteenth Amendments. 
Hawke v. Smith. 
The Culminating Decision Upholding the Eighteenth 
Amendment and the Law for its Enforcement. 
National Prohibition Cases. Rhode Island v. 
Palmer. 


The principle of prohibition has been thoroughly and repeatedly 
upheld by the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. 
Before that exalted tribunal the constitutionality of prohibition 
has been assailed from every angle by some of the highest paid 
lawyers in the country, but the only effect of each fresh assault 
has been to leave prohibition more impregnable than before. 

There was a group of decisions which some might interpret as 
contrary to this statement—those growing out of the conflict 
between the police power of the states and the commerce power 
of the federal government. But these cases, although limiting the 
scope of state prohibition, were by no means antagonistic to the 
principle of prohibition and their effect was to emphasize the 
national character of the prohibition question. 

The court decisions have had such an influence on the course of 
the prohibition reform that any history bearing upon the prohi- 
bition question would be incomplete without including the judicial 
phase. 


THE FOUR GROUPS OF DECISIONS 


There are four groups of decisions which have influenced the 
history of the whole prohibition movement: 

I. The first group comprises those cases upholding the prin- 
ciple of prohibition and establishing its constitutionality, begin- 
ning with the License Cases in 1847. 

II. The compensation case of 1887, which was important 
enough to be considered in a class by itself. 

III. The cases involving interstate commerce, relating to the 
conflict between the police power of the states and the commerce 
power of the federal government beginning in 1888 and extending 
to the upholding of the Webb-Kenyon Law in 1917. 

IV. The decisions upholding national legislation, the Webb- 


518 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Kenyon Law, the Reed Amendment, War Prohibition, Consti- 
tutional Prohibition, and the Volstead Act. 


I. Cases UPHOLDING THE PRINCIPLE OF PROHIBITION. 
The License Cases of 1847 


Even before the enactment of the famous Maine Law of 1851 
the Supreme Court had upheld the right to prohibit the liquor 
traffic. Chief Justice Taney had declared: “If any State deems 
the retail and internal traffic in ardent spirits injurious to its 
citizens and calculated to produce illness, vice, or debauchery, I 
see nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent 
it from regulating and restraining the traffic or from prohibiting 
it altogether if it thinks proper.” 

The License Cases (5 Howard, 504), 1847, were three cases 
brought up from Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hamp- 
shire, respectively, arising from state laws passed for the purpose 
of discouraging the use of ardent spirits within their respective 
territories by prohibiting their sale in small quantities and with- 
out licenses previously obtained from the state authorities. It was 
brought out in the argument that owing to many of the authorities 
refusing to grant licenses, the effect was to bring about prohibi- 
tion. 

The validity of the state laws was drawn in question upon the 
ground that they were repugnant to that clause of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States which confers on Congress the power 
to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several 
states. 

In determining the constitutionality of the state statutes one 
of the chief points for consideration was whether there was any 
conflict between the exercise by Congress of its power to regulate 
commerce with foreign countries, or among the several states, 
and the exercise by a state of its police power. 

In separate opinions, filed by the individual justices, the laws 
of these states were upheld, notwithstanding that the New Hamp- 
shire case was one in which the liquor had been brought from 
another state and sold in New Hampshire in the original package. 
Most of the discussion in the decision was upon the interstate 
commerce aspect, there having been no question in the minds of 
the court that, when only internal commerce was involved, a state 
could prohibit if it desired. 

The Court decided that, even though the liquor was an import 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 519 


from another state and although Congress clearly has the power 

to regulate such importation, yet, in the absence of action by 

Congress, the liquor could be regulated by the state as soon as it is 

landed in its territory and a tax could be imposed, or a license 

required, or the sale altogether prohibited, according to the policy 

which the state may suppose to be its duty or interest to pursue. 
Justice Grier declared: 


The true question presented by these cases, and one which I am 
not disposed to evade, is whether the states have a right to prohibit 
the sale and consumption of an article of commerce which they 
believe to be pernicious in its effects, and the cause of disease, 
pauperism and crime... . Without attempting to define what are 
the peculiar subjects or limits of this power, it may safely be 
affirmed that every law for the restraint and punishment of crime, 
for the preservation of the public peace, health, and morals, must 
come within this category. . . . It is not necessary, for the sake of 
justifying the state legislation now under consideration, to array the 
appalling statistics of misery, pauperism, and crime, which have 
their origin in the abuse or use of ardent spirits. The police power, 
which is exclusively in the states, is alone competent to the correc- 
tion of these great evils, and all measures of restraint or prohibition 
necessary to effect the purpose are within the scope of that authority. 


This decision in the License Cases was the accepted doctrine 
for over forty years. It came to be the settled practice that 
liquors transported from one state into another became subject to 
the laws of the state into which shipped, the same as liquor made 
within the state. 

In the decade following the decision in the License Cases thir- 
teen states passed prohibitory laws and with the exception of one 
state, Indiana, in 1855, the principle of prohibition has been 
upheld in the highest court of every state. Certain provisions of 
the New York Act of 1855 were declared unconstitutional but the 
main principle stood. 


Cases Establishing the Constitutionality of Prohibition 


For many years, more than a quarter of a century, the right to 
prohibit was not seriously contested in the Supreme Court. The 
liquor interests probably found it easier to overcome prohibition 
through political manipulation than through legal argument. 

But after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, follow- 
ing the Civil War, violators of state laws sought to take refuge 
behind that part of the Fourteenth Amendment which says: 


No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 


520 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall 
any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without 
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction 
the equal protection of the laws. 

Then followed a series of attacks on prohibition as violative of 
some provision of the Constitution, all of which were decisively 
settled by the decisions of the Supreme Court. 

These cases extending from 1873 to 1890 firmly established 
step by step the complete constitutionality of prohibition. The 
first of these cases to reach the Supreme Court was that of Barte- 
meyer v. lowa (18 Wall. 129), 1873. The Court declared that, 
as a measure of police regulation for the preservation of public 
morals, a state law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of in- 
toxicating liquors is not repugnant to any clause of the Constitu- 
tion prior to the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court further 
declared that the right to sell intoxicating liquors is not one of 
the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States 
which by the Fourteenth Amendment the states were forbidden to 
abridge. 

The next leading liquor case was Beer Co. v. Massachusetts 
(97 U. S. 25), 1877. This involved the provision in Article 1, 
Section 10, of the Constitution that no state shall pass any law 
impairing the obligation of contracts. A brewery chartered by the 
state before prohibition was adopted claimed that the charter was 
a contract which could not be impaired by a subsequent prohibi- 
tory statute. 

The Supreme Court decided that all rights are held subject to 
the police power of the state; and if the public safety or the public 
morals requires the discontinuance of any manufacture or traffic, 
the legislature may provide for its discontinuance notwithstanding 
individuals or corporations may thereby suffer inconvenience. It 
further held that, as the police power of a state extends to the 
protection of the lives, health and property of the citizens and the 
preservation of good order and public morals, the legislature 
cannot by any contract, divest itself of the power to provide for 
these objects. They belong to that class of objects which demand 
the application of the maxim, Salus populi suprema lex: and they 
are to be attained and provided for by such appropriate means as 
the legislative discretion may devise. 

In the case of Foster v. Kansas (112 U. S. 201), 1884, the 
Court said that the question as to the constitutional power of the 
state to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor 
was no longer an open one in the Court. 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 521 


The next important decision was the case of Mugler v. Kan- 
sas in 1887 wherein the Kansas law prohibiting the manufacture 
of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes was sustained and 
wherein it was also decided that prohibition does not conflict with 
that part of the Fourteenth Amendment which says that no state 
shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due 
process of law. This case and the interstate commerce cases 
1888-1890 are hereinafter discussed separately. 

Crowley v. Christensen (137 U. S. 86), again upholding the 
principle of prohibition, is the culminating decision with respect 
to setting forth the sound legal reason for prohibition. It de- 
molished the contention that the liquor question was not properly 
a matter for legislation and flatly denied that there was any in- 
herent right in a citizen to sell intoxicating liquors. The case 
was that of a man who had sold liquor in San Francisco after 


having been refused a license. 
The Court said: 


It is undoubtedly true that it is the right of every citizen of the 
United States to pursue any lawful trade or business, under such 
restrictions aS are imposed upon all persons, of the same age, sex, 
and condition. But the possession and enjoyment of all rights are 
subject to such reasonable conditions as may be deemed by the 
governing authority of the country essential to the safety, health, 
peace, good order, and morals of the community. Even liberty 
itself, the greatest of all rights, is not unrestricted license to act 
according to one’s own will. It is only freedom from restraint 
under conditions essential to the equal enjoyment of the same right 
by others. It is, then, liberty regulated by law. The right to 
acquire, enjoy and dispose of property is declared in the constitu- 
tions of several States to be one of the inalienable rights of man. 
But this declaration is not held to preclude the legislature of any 
State from passing laws respecting the acquisition, enjoyment and 
disposition of property. . . . As to the enjoyment of property, the 
rule is general that it must be accompanied with such limitations as 
will not impair the equal enjoyment by others of their property... . 

It is urged that as the liquors are used as a beverage and the 
injury following them, if taken in excess, is voluntarily inflicted 
and is confined to the party offending, their sale should be without 
restriction, the contention being that what a man shall drink, equally 
with what he shall eat, is not properly a matter for legislation. 

There is in this position an assumption of fact which does not 
exist, that when liquors are taken in excess the injuries are con- 
fined to the party offending. The injury, it is true, first falls upon 
him in his health, which the habit undermines; in his morals, which 
it weakens, and in the self-abasement which it creates. But, as it 


522 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


leads to neglect of business and waste of property and general 
demoralization, it affects those who are immediately connected with 
and dependent upon him. 

By the general concurrence of opinion of every civilized and 
Christian community, there are few sources of crime and misery 
to society equal to the dramshop, where intoxicating liquors in small 
quantities to be drunk at the time are sold indiscriminately to all 
parties applying. The statistics of every State show a greater 
amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits 
obtained at these retail liquor saloons than to any other source. The 
sale of such liquors in this way has heretofore been, at all times, 
by the courts of every State, considered as the proper subject of 
legislative regulation. Not only may a license be exacted from the 
keeper of the saloon before a glass of his liquor can thus be dis- 
posed of, but restrictions may be imposed as to the class of persons 
to whom they may be sold, and the hours of the day and days of 
the week on which the saloons may be opened. Their sale in that 
form may be absolutely prohibited. It is a question of public 
expediency and public morality and not of federal law. The police 
power of the State is fully competent to regulate the business, to 
mitigate its evils or to suppress it entirely. There is no inherent 
right in a citizen to thus sell intoxicating liquors by retail; it is 
not a privilege of a citizen of the State or a citizen of the United 
States. As it is a business attended with danger to the community 
it may, as already said, be entirely prohibited, or be permitted under 
such conditions as will limit to the utmost its evils. The manner 
and extent of regulation rests in the discretion of the governing 
authority. 


This decision so thoroughly settled the right to prohibit that 
since 1890 the contrary contention has had no standing before the 
United States Supreme Court. 

Crane v. Campbell. In 1917 the Supreme Court went still 
further. The cases thus far had upheld the right to prohibit 
the manufacture of and traffic in liquor. In Crane v. Campbell 
(245 U. S. 304), 1917, the Supreme Court declared that the 
right to hold intoxicating liquors for personal use is not a con- 
stitutional privilege of a citizen, and that a state may prohibit 
and punish the possession of intoxicating liquors for personal 
use. 

This was an Idaho case in which the plaintiff in error was ar- 
rested and held in custody, solely because charged with having 
in his possession a bottle of whisky for his own use and benefit 
and not for purpose of giving away or selling the same. The 
Supreme Court. after reviewing the Idaho legislation, in affrm- 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 523 


ing the judgment of the State Court against the plaintiff in error, 
said: 


It must now be regarded as settled that, on account of their well- 
known noxious qualities and the extraordinary evils shown by ex- 
perience commonly to be consequent upon their use, a State has 
power absolutely to prohibit manufacture, gift, purchase, sale or 
transportation of alcoholic liquors within its borders without vio- 
lating the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment. .. . 

As the State has the power above indicated to prohibit it may 
adopt such measures as are reasonably appropriate or needful to 
render exercise of that power effective. ... 

And considering the notorious difficulties always attendant upon 
efforts to suppress the traffic in liquors, we are unable to say that 
the challenged inhibition of their possession was arbitrary and un- 
reasonable or without proper relation to the legitimate legislative 
purpose. 

We further think it clearly follows from our numerous decisions 
upholding prohibition legislation that the right to hold intoxicating 
liquors for personal use is not one of the fundamental privileges 
of a citizen of the United States which no state may abridge. A 
contrary view would be incompatible with the undoubted power to 
prevent the manufacture, gift, sale, purchase or transportation of 
such articles, the only feasible ways of getting them. An assured 
right of possession would necessarily imply some adequate method 
to obtain not subject to destruction at the will of the State. 


Samuels v. McCurdy (267 U.S. 188). In this case in March, 
1925, the Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of a 
Georgia law prohibiting the possession of intoxicating liquors 
although such liquors had been acquired before the state law 
became effective. 


II. THE QUESTION OF COMPENSATION. MUGLER v. Kansas, 
1887. 


For a number of years a struggle over the question of com- 
pensation for those deprived of their property on account of 
prohibition had been forecast. 

In the case of Bartemeyer v. Iowa in 1873 there was a broad 
intimation that, if a case were presented in which a person owning 
liquor or other property at a time the statute was enacted, there 
would be a grave question whether this might be a deprivation 
of property without due process of law, and consequently re- 
pugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. | 

Likewise in Beer Co. v. Massachusetts, 1877, there was a state- 


524 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


ment: “We do not mean to say that property actually in existence 
and in which the right of the owner had become vested, may be 
taken for the public good without compensation.” But this was 
mere dicta, as the liquor involved was not in existence when the 
liquor law of Massachusetts was passed. 

In 1886 a United States Circuit Court, in a Kansas case, had 
decided against the taking of private property for the public 
good without compensation. And even the Supreme Court, in 
1886, in some Iowa cases was evenly divided on the question of 
compensation, one of the nine justices having been unable to 
participate in the decision owing to sickness. 

In the state constitutional amendment campaigns of the eighties 
the question of compensation was one which was being raised by 
the opponents of prohibition to create opposition to prohibition. 

In the campaign for a prohibition constitutional amendment in 
Michigan in 1887 the question of compensation was strongly 
argued. In March of that year John B. Finch, Chairman of the 
Prohibition National Committee, in a famous debate in Detroit 
discussed the subject in answer to the arguments of an opponent. 
Finch’s logical argument anticipated the reasoning of the Supreme 
Court eight months later. He said: 


Government compensates for private property taken for public 
use. Government never compensates for prohibiting the wrongful 
or injurious use of private property. If the liquor business had 
produced the same results as the dry goods business there would 
have been no attempt to prohibit it. The prohibition is the result 
of the effects of the business. It has made its own suppression 
necessary and cannot plead its own wrongs in a court of equity.2 


He called attention to the fact that the license issued to a 
saloon-keeper is for one year, the bond is for one year and when 
the saloon-keeper enters the traffic he knows that at the expiration 
of the year all privileges and all rights under that license and that 
bond expire and no mandamus will lie to compel the officers to 
renew the privilege. 

Those engaged in the liquor traffic knew it was an exceedingly 
risky business and one which might be suppressed at any time. 
Repeated court decisions had served to give notice that their traf- 
fic was not regarded as being in the same class with legitimate 
business. 

The precedents wherein such evils as slavery and lotteries had 
been abolished without compensation to the slaveholder and lot- 


tery keeper were cited against compensation to the liquor interests. 
1John B, Finch, His Life and Work, Pp. 300. 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 525 


Furthermore, by the taxpaying people it was felt that if there 
should be any compensation at all it should be paid by the liquor 
interests for the colossal and irreparable ruin they had wrought 
rather than given by the state to the liquor interests. 

It is now worthy of comment that never in the history of pro- 
hibition in the United States has compensation been granted as 
an incident of the prohibitory laws. But before the sweeping 
decision in the case of Mugler v. Kansas the future was uncertain. 

In this situation the case decided in December, 1887, was ap- 
propriately called “The Great Prohibition Decision.” It sum- 
marized the principles decided in the earlier liquor cases and 
added the decision that a state has the right to prohibit the 
manufacture of liquors for the manufacturer’s own use, that 
compensation is not necessary, and that a state can enact a law 
providing for the closing of liquor premises as nuisances without 
jury trials. 

Mugler v. Kansas (123 U.S. 623), 1887, was a case wherein 
the owners of Kansas breweries were being prosecuted for vio- 
lation of the Kansas prohibition law by selling beer which had 
been manufactured before the passage of the act. The buildings 
and machinery constituting the breweries had been specially con- 
structed for making beer and were of little value if not used for 
that purpose. 

The issue was, whether the prohibition statute of Kansas was 
in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reviewed 
the preceding decisions and showed that those decisions had made 
clear that legislation by a State prohibiting the manufacture 
within her limits of intoxicating liquors to be sold therein or 
bartered for general use as a beverage does not necessarily in- 
fringe any right, privilege or immunity secured by the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. 


Manufacture for Private Use or Export 


The breweries had contended however that no legislature has 
the right to prohibit any citizen from manufacturing for his own 
use, for export or storage, any article of food or drink not en- 
dangering or affecting the rights of others. 

The Court answered: 


If such manufacture does prejudicially affect the rights and in- 
terests of the community, it follows, from the very premises stated, 
that society has the power to protect itself, by legislation, against 
the injurious consequences of that business. As was said in Munn 


526 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


v. Illinois, while power does not exist with the whole people to 
control rights that are purely and exclusively private, government 
may require each citizen to so conduct himself, and so use his own 
property as not unnecessarily to injure another. 

But by whom, or by what authority, is it to be determined whether 
the manufacture of particular articles of drink, either for general 
use or for personal use of the maker, will injuriously affect the 
public? Power to determine such questions, so as to bind all, must 
exist somewhere; else society will be at the mercy of the few, who, 
regarding only their own appetites or passions, may be willing to 
imperil the peace and security of the many, provided only they are 
permitted to do as they please. Under our system that power is 
lodged with the legislative branch of the government. It belongs 
to that department to exert what are known as the police powers 
of the State, and to determine primarily what measures are appro- 
priate or needful for the protection of the public morals, the public 
health, or the public safety. ... . 

It is difficult to perceive any ground for the judiciary to declare 
that the prohibition by Kansas of the manufacture or sale, within 
her limits, of intoxicating liquors for general. use there as a bev- 
erage, is not fairly adapted to the end of protecting the community 
against the evils which confessedly result from the excessive use of 
ardent spirits. There is no justification for holding that the State, 
under the guise merely of police regulations, is here aiming to de+ 
prive the citizen of his constitutional rights; for we cannot shut out 
of view the fact, within the knowledge of all, that the public health, 
the public morals, and the public safety may be endangered by the 
general use of intoxicating drinks; nor the fact, established by 
statistics accessible to every one, that the idleness, disorder, pauper- 
ism, and crime existing in the country are, in some degree at least, 
traceable to this evil. If, therefore, a State deems the absolute 
prohibition of the manufacture and sale, within her limits, of in- 
toxicating liquors for other than medical, scientific, and manufac- 
turing purposes, to be necessary to the peace and security of society, 
the courts cannot, without usurping legislative functions, override 
the will of the people as thus expressed by their chosen representa- 
TLV Sse ty te 

If, in the judgment of the legislature, the manufacture of in- 
toxicating liquors for the maker’s own use, as a beverage, would 
tend to cripple, if it did not defeat, the efforts to guard the com- 
munity against the evils attending the excessive use of such liquors, 
it is not for the courts, upon their views as to what is best and 
safest for the community, to disregard the legislative determination 
of that question. So far from such a regulation having no relation 
to the general end sought to be accomplished, the entire scheme of 
prohibition, as embodied in the constitution and laws of Kansas, 
might fail, if the right of each citizen to manufacture intoxicating 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 527 


liquors for his own use as a beverage were recognized. Such a 
right does not inhere in citizenship. Nor can it be said that govern- 
ment interferes with or impairs any one’s constitutional rights of 
liberty or of property, when it determines that the manufacture and 
sale of intoxicating drinks, for general or individual use, as a bev- 
erage, are, or may become, hurtful to society, and constitute, there- 
fore, a business in which no one may lawfully engage. Those rights 
are best secured, in our government, by the observance, upon the 
part of all, of such regulations as are established by competent 
authority to promote the common good. No one may rightfully 
do that which the law-making power, upon reasonable grounds, 
declares to be prejudicial to the general welfare. 


“A year later in Kidd v. Pearson (128 U.S. 1) the Court 
upheld the power of the state to prohibit the manufacture of 
liquor even though the manufacturer intended to export the liquor 
when made. 


Compensation Refused 


Continuing, in the decision in Mugler v. Kansas, the Supreme 
Court said: 


It is contended by the defendants that, as the primary and prin- 
cipal use of beer is as a beverage; as their respective breweries were 
erected when it was lawful to engage in the manufacture of beer 
for every purpose; as such establishments will become of no value 
as property, or, at least, will be materially diminished in value, if 
not employed in the manufacture of beer for every purpose; the 
prohibition upon their being so employed is, in effect, a taking of 
property for public use without compensation, and depriving the 
citizen of his property without due process of law. In other words, 
although the State, in the exercise of her police powers, may law- 
fully prohibit the manufacture and sale, within her limits, of in- 
toxicating liquors to be used as a beverage, legislation having that 
object in view cannot be enforced against those who, at the time, 
happen to own property, the chief value of which consists in its 
fitness for such manufacturing purposes, unless compensation is 
first made for the diminution in the value of their property, result- 
ing from such prohibitory enactments. 

This interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment is inadmissible. 
It cannot be supposed that the States intended, by adopting that 
amendment, to impose restraints upon the exercise of their powers 
for the protection of the safety, health or morals of the community. 
In respect to contracts, the obligations of which are protected against 
hostile State legislation, this court in Butchers’ Union Co. v. Crescent 
City Co. (111 U.S. 746,751), said that the State could not, by any 


528 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


contract, limit the exercise of her power to the prejudice of the 
public health and the public morals. So, in Stone v. Mississippi 
(ror U.S. 814,816), where the Constitution was invoked against 
the repeal by the State of a charter, granted to a private corporation, 
to conduct a lottery, and for which that corporation paid to the 
State a valuable consideration in money, the court said: “No legis- 
lature can bargain away the public health or the public morals. The 
people themselves cannot do it, much less their servants. . . . Gov- 
ernment is organized with a view to their preservation, and cannot 
divest itself of the power to provide for them.” ... 

The principle, that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, 
or property, without due process of law, was embodied, in substance, 
in the constitutions of nearly all, if not all, of the States at the time 
of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment; and it has never 
been regarded as incompatible with the principle, equally vital, be- 
cause essential to the peace and safety of society, that all property 
in this country is held under the implied obligation that the owner’s 
use of it shall not be injurious to the community... . 

The present case must be governed by principles that do not 
involve the power of eminent domain, in the exercise of which 
property may not be taken for public use without compensation. A 
prohibition simply upon the use of property for purposes that are 
declared, by valid legislation, to be injurious to the health, morals 
or safety of the community, cannot, in any just sense, be deemed 
a taking or an appropriation of property for the public benefit. 
Such legislation does not disturb the owner in the control or use 
of his property for lawful purposes, nor restrict his right to dis- 
pose of it, but is only a declaration by the State that its use by any 
one, for certain forbidden purposes, is prejudicial to the public 
interests. .. . The power which the States have of prohibiting such 
use by individuals of their property as will be prejudicial to the 
health, the morals or the safety of the public, 1s not—and, con- 
sistently with the existence and safety of organized society, cannot 
be—burdened with the condition that the State must compensate 
such individual owners for pecuniary losses they may sustain, by 
reason of their not being permitted, by a noxious use of thew prop- 
erty, to inflict injury upon the commumty. 

The exercise of the police power by the destruction of property 
which is itself a public nuisance, or the prohibition of its use in a 
particular way, whereby its value becomes depreciated, is very 
different from taking property for public use, or from depriving a 
person of his property without due process of law. In the one case, 
a nuisance only is abated; in the other, unoffending property is taken 
away from an innocent owner. 

It is true, that, when the defendants in these cases purchased or 
erected their breweries, the laws of the State did not forbid the 
manufacture of intoxicating liquors. But the State did not thereby 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 529 


give any assurance, or come under an obligation, that its legislation 
upon that subject would remain unchanged. Indeed, as was said 
in Stone v. Mississippi (101 U.S. 814), the supervision of the 
public health and: the public morals is a governmental power, “con- 
tinuing in its nature,” and “to be dealt with as the special exigencies 
of the moment may require”; and that, “for this purpose, the largest 
legislative discretion is allowed, and the discretion cannot be parted 
with any more than the power itself.” So in Beer Co. v. Massa- 
chusetts (97 U.S. 32): “If the public safety or the public morals 
requires the discontinuance of any manufacture or traffic, the hand 
of the legislature cannot be stayed from providing for its discon- 
tinuance by any incidental inconvenience which individuals or cor- 
porations may suffer.” 


Abatement of Nuisances and Injunction 


Of scarcely less importance than the upholding of prohibition 
and the denial of the right of compensation was the approval 
given by this decision to the means of enforcing prohibition pro- 
vided by the Kansas law. A Kansas statute of 1885 contained 
provisions for the abatement of nuisances and for injunction pro- 
ceedings more radical than had hitherto been contained in any 
prohibitory law. 

The injunction law was enacted as a means for effectively and 
expeditiously enforcing the law. The power to enjoin a liquor 
establishment conducted and known as a nuisance had always 
been among the ordinary equity powers of Courts of Chancery 
and in very old statutes unlicensed liquor places were declared 
nuisances and this made them subject to abatement under the 
equity power of injunction. 

The Kansas statute, and similar ones in other states, enacted 
the details of procedure to procure abatement by injunction and 
thus make the remedy practicable. 

A leading factor in bringing about the utilization of this remedy 
was the experience with the difficulty of obtaining convictions in 
jury trials where one juror opposed to prohibition could prevent 
a conviction. In the lower courts where liquor cases were ordi- 
narily brought the machinery for the selection of jurors was 
commonly under the control of petty politicians. Even though 
the testimony might overwhelmingly indicate the guilt of the 
accused, personal feeling, partisan influence, political manipula- 
tion, and similar influences often prevented conviction. 

The Kansas law provided that all places where intoxicating 
liquors were manufactured, sold, bartered, or given away or kept 


530 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


for sale, barter or delivery in violation of the law—that such 
places should be declared to be common nuisances, and upon the 
judgment of any court having jurisdiction finding such a place to 
be a nuisance, the proper officials (mentioned) should be directed 
to shut up and abate such place by taking possession thereof and 
destroying all intoxicating liquor found therein, together with all 
signs, bars, bottles, glasses and other property used in keeping 
and maintaining said nuisance. The law provided that the owner 
or keeper thereof should upon conviction be adjudged guilty of 
maintaining a common nuisance and fined and imprisoned. 

The law further provided that the attorney-general of the state, 
the county attorney or any citizen of the county could maintain an 
action in the name of the state to abate and perpetually enjoin the 
same. The injunction should be granted at the commencement 
of the action and no bond should be required. Any person vio- 
lating the terms of any injunction granted in such proceeding 
should be punished as for contempt by a fine of not less than 
$100 nor more than $500, or by imprisonment in the county 
jail not less than thirty days nor more than six months or by 
both such fine or imprisonment in the discretion of the court. 

This provision was the especial object of a vigorous attack by 
the breweries’ counsel. Here too the Court answered: 


We are unable to perceive anything in these regulations incon- 
sistent with the constitutional guarantees of liberty and property. 
The State having authority to prohibit the manufacture and sale 
of intoxicating liquors for other than medical, scientific and mechani- 
cal purposes, we do not doubt her power to declare that any place 
kept and maintained for the illegal manufacture and sale of such 
liquors, shall be deemed a common nuisance, and be abated, and 
at the same time to provide for the indictment and trial of the 
offender. One is a proceeding against the property used for for- 
bidden purposes, while the other is for the punishment of the 
offender. 


Upholding proceedings in equity for the purposes indicated in 
the statute as proper, the Court quoted Justice Story who said: 


In regard to public nuisances, the jurisdiction of courts of 
equity seems to be of a very ancient date, and has been distinctly 
traced back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. . . . In case of public 
nuisances properly so called, an indictment lies to abate them, and 
to punish the offenders. But an information also lies in equity to 
redress the grievance by way of injunction. 


Continuing, the Court said: 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 531 


The ground of this jurisdiction . . . is the ability of courts of 
equity to give a more speedy, effectual and permanent remedy than 
can be had at law. They can not only prevent nuisances that are 
threatened, and before irreparable mischief ensues, but arrest or 
abate those in progress, and by perpetual injunction protect the 
public against them in the future: whereas courts of law can only 
reach existing nuisances, leaving future acts to be the subject of 
new prosecutions or proceedings. This is a salutary jurisdiction, 
especially where a nuisance affects the health, morals or safety of 
the community. Though not frequently exercised, the power un- 
doubtedly exists in courts of equity thus to protect the public against 
injlirvuleok. 

As to the objection that the statute makes no provision for a 
jury trial in cases like this one, it is sufficient to say that such a 
mode of trial is not required in suits in equity brought to enjoin a 
public nuisance. 


Thus in this “Great Decision” in 1887 was the principle of 
prohibition given the unqualified approval and support of the 
highest court in the land. 


III. Tue Interstate CoMMERCE CASES. 


The rejoicing over the sweeping decision in Mugler v. Kansas 
was ere long turned to consternation, particularly among those 
temperance groups who were pinning their faith to state pro- 
hibition as differentiated from the members of the Prohibition 
party who all along had emphasized National Prohibition. 

Although the principle of prohibition had been consistently and 
continuously supported by the Supreme Court, the spirit of na- 
tionalism, awakened following the Civil War, was emphasizing 
the powers of the national government, and when the powers of 
the states conflicted with those of the federal government the 
federal power prevailed. 

When the decision in the License Cases had been rendered in 
1847 states rights ideas, as exemplified in Supreme Court de- 
cisions, had been in the ascendant, never more so than under the 
Chief Justiceship of Taney. 

The Constitution provides that “Congress shall have power to 
regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several 
states.’ It also provides that the “Constitution and the laws 
which shall be made in pursuance thereof... shall be the 
supreme law of the land.” 

From an early period in the history of judicial decisions there 
has been a conflict between the reserved powers of the states, 


532 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


especially the tax and police powers, and the commerce power of 
the national government. The interstate commerce decisions on 
the prohibition question were a part of that conflict. 

A distinct evolution in the assertion of federal interstate com- 
merce powers is discernible in the Supreme Court decisions. The 
interpretation of the commerce power has been one of the chief 
means by which the power of the federal government has been 
expanded and as the federal commerce powers increase any state 
powers in conflict therewith have to give way. 

In 1888, in the case of Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern 
Railway Company (125 U.S. 465), an lowa statute forbidding 
common carriers to bring intoxicating liquors into the state from 
any other state or territory without having been furnished a 
certificate showing the consignee was authorized to sell such 
liquors, was declared unconstitutional because a regulation of 
commerce among the states and not sanctioned by Congress. 

The Court quoted decisions that beyond all question the trans- 
portation of freight, or of the subjects of commerce, for the 
purpose of exchange or sale is a constituent of commerce itself, 
and that “whatever may be the nature and reach of the police 
power of a state, it cannot be exercised over a subject confided 
exclusively to Congress by the federal Constitution.” 

Itjsaid: 


A State has legislative control, exclusive of Congress, within its 
territory, of all persons, things, and transactions of strictly internal 
concern. For the purpose of protecting its people against the evils 
of intemperance it has the right to prohibit the manufacture within 
its limits of intoxicating liquors; it may also prohibit all domestic 
commerce in them between its own inhabitants, whether the articles 
are introduced from other States or from foreign countries; it may 
punish those who sell them in violation of its laws; it may adopt 
any measures tending, even indirectly and remotely, to make the 
policy effective until it passes the line of power delegated to Con- 
gress under the Constitution. It cannot, without the consent of 
Congress, express or implied, regulate commerce between its people 
and those of the other States of the Union in order to effect its 
end, however desirable such a regulation might be. 


The statute of Iowa was held to be an attempt to exercise 
jurisdiction over property within the limits of other states. It 
was an unauthorized interference with the commerce power given 
to Congress. It was therefore declared unconstitutional. 

This decision went far to call attention to the fact that action 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 533 


by Congress was essential to the effective enforcement of pro- 
hibition and that the liquor question was a national one. 

This case did not involve the right of the importer to sell the 
liquor brought in from another state. But the next case did 
authorize such sale. 


Leisy v. Hardin, the Original Package Decision 


This was a case (135 U.S. 100), 1890, of brewers in Illinois 
having shipped beer in kegs and cases to their agent in Iowa 
Ww here it was sold in the original packages i in which it was shipped, 
kegs and cases. It was held by a majority of the Court, five to 
three, that the Iowa statute was unconstitutional in so far as it 
prohibited the sale of liquor by a foreign and non-resident im- 
porter in the package in which it was brought from another state. 

The decision went farther than the Bowman case ond over- 
ruled the 1847 decision in the Pierce v. New Hampshire case of 
the License Cases in which the New sree aaittie’ law, although 
affecting interstate commerce, was upheld, inasmuch as Congress 
had made no regulation upon the subject. The decision in the 
Leisy wv. Hardin case was that, inasmuch as interstate commerce 
is national in its character and must be governed by a uniform 
system, so long as Congress did not pass any law to regulate it 
specifically, or did not act in such a way as to allow the laws of 
the state to operate upon it, Congress thereby had indicated its 
will that such commerce should be free and untrammeled. 

While a state may exercise police power within its limits, yet 
a subject matter, interstate commerce, which has been confided 
exclusively to Congress by the Constitution is not within the 
jurisdiction of the police power of a state, unless placed there 
by Congressional action. However, upon local matters the Court 
declared the doctrine to be that, when the subject upon which 
Congress can act under its commercial power is local in its nature 
or sphere of operation, such as harbor pilotage, the improvement 
of harbors, the establishment of beacons and buoys to guide 
vessels in and out of port, the construction of bridges over 
navigable rivers, the erection of wharves, piers, docks, mand the 
like which can be properly regulated only by special provisions 
adapted to their localities, the state can act until Congress inter- 
feres and supercedes its authority. 

But when the subject is national in its character and admits 
and requires uniformity of regulation affecting alike all the states, 
including the importation of foods from one state into another, 


534 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Congress alone can act upon it. The absence of any law of Con- 
gress on the subject is equivalent to the requirement that com- 
merce in that matter shall be free. It is only after the impor- 
tation is completed and the property imported has mingled with 
and become a part of the general property of the state that the 
state’s regulations can act upon it. 

The point of time when an import becomes a part of the general 
property of the state is when the importer has so acted upon it 
that it has become incorporated and mixed up with the mass of 
property in the state. This happens when the original package is 
no longer in the hands of the importer. This interpretation re- 
specting the term, original package, followed the precedent of 
Brown v. Maryland, a case involving a tax on foreign imports 
in 1827, succeeded by other cases giving the term a technical 
definition. 

The conclusion was that the importers of beer had not only the 
right to receive it but to sell it in original packages, by which act 
alone it would become mingled in the common mass of property 
within the state. Up to that point of time, the time when sold, 
the state had no right to interfere. To concede to a state the 
power to exclude articles of commerce without Congressional per- 
mission is to concede to a state power to regulate interstate com- 
merce, a power which was granted to Congress alone. 


Effect of the Leisy v. Hardin Decision 


Through the Bowman decision the state prohibition laws were 
weakened because individuals were allowed to import liquor from 
other states. But through the Leisy v. Hardin decision these laws 
were practically nullified because the way was open for the wide- 
spread sale of liquors in original packages. Black, On Intoxi- 
cating Liquors (1892), describing the effects of this decision 
says: 


This decision was followed by immediate, widespread, and most 
pernicious results. The brewers and distillers, recognizing the 
extent of the protection afforded to them by this construction of 
the law, hastened to establish depots and agencies in states foreign 
to their own, and especially those where prohibition or stringent 
licensing provisions were in force, and there offered for sale their 
products in barrels, kegs, cases, and even small bottles. Several 
portions of the country, where the greatest advances towards the 
entire suppression of the traffic had previously been made, were at 
once populated with “original package saloons,” and thereby de- 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 535 


luged with intoxicants, and the officers of the law found their 
energies paralyzed by the claim of immunity under the Constitution.? 


In, Kansas saloon-keepers with their retinues of disreputable 
allies who had been driven out of the state came back. ‘The 
spectacle of these brazen and remorseless men returning to de- 
bauch the morals of the state aroused public indignation and 
contempt.” ® 

A great convention was called in Topeka on July 16, 1890. It 
was what the Kansans called “probably the largest temperance 
convention ever held upon the American continent.” 

All over the country there was an insistent demand upon Con- 
gress for immediate relief. The decision had repeatedly suggested 
that Congress had the power to cooperate by removing the re- 
strictions upon the states in dealing with imported articles. 


The Wilson Law 


Congress acted by passing within four months the Wilson Law 
which provided: 


All fermented, distilled or other intoxicating liquors or liquids 
transported into any state or territory or remaining therein for use, 
consumption, sale or storage therein, shall wpon arrival in such 
state or territory be subject to the operation and effect of the laws 
of such state or territory enacted in the exercise of its police powers 
to the same extent and in the same manner as though such liquids 
or liquors had been purchased in such state or territory, and shall 
not be exempt therefrom by reason of being introduced therein in 
original packages or otherwise. 


In re Rahrer 


The Wilson Law was declared constitutional in the case of 
In re Rahrer (140 U. S. 545), 1891. This law was described as 
an action by Congress divesting intoxicating liquors of their inter- 
state commerce character at an earlier period than would have 
been the case if Congress had not passed the law. 


Rhodes v. Iowa 


In 1898 in the case of Rhodes v. Iowa (170 U. S. 412) the 
Wilson Law was construed to mean that the powers of the state 


2H. C. Black, A Treatise on the Law of Intoricating Liquors, p. 104. 
3T. E, Stephens, Prohibition in Kansas, p. 22. 


536 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


did not attach until the goods imported had been delivered to the 
consignee. . 

The term upon arrival did not mean arrival at the state line, 
but when delivered to the consignee. The effect of this decision 
was to permit individuals to receive and use liquor. But instead 
of permitting the sale of it as under the decision in the Leisy v. 
Hardin case the effect of the Wilson Law was to sub ject the sale 
or disposal of liquors to the law of the state. 

The decision opened the way for residents of prohibition and 
no-license territory to import all they wanted for personal use 
and it thus largely destroyed the effectiveness of the laws. 

In a decision immediately following, Vance v. Vandercook 
(170 U.S. 438), 1898, the Court said that under the Wilson Law 
every resident of a prohibition state is free to receive for his own 
use liquor from other states and that the inhibitions of state 
statutes do not operate to prevent liquors from other states from 
being shipped into a prohibition state on the order of a resident 
for his own use. 

In American Express Co. v. Iowa (196 U. S. 1 33), 1905, the 
Court decided a C. O. D. package of liquor was not subject to 
confiscation. 

After the Rhodes v. Iowa decision there was a continuous at- 
tempt on the part of the temperance organizations to get Congress 
to remedy the weakness of the Wilson Law by preventing the 
importation of liquor into prohibition states for personal use. 
In Congress after Congress bills were presented. In several 
Congresses Congressman Littlefield of Maine was the leader in 
this effort. 


But notwithstanding the efforts and appeals of the temperance’ 


people it was fifteen years after the decision in Rhodes v. Iowa 
before Congress passed any remedial legislation. This was the 
Webb-Kenyon Law of 1913. 


IV. Later Decisions. 


Upholding the Webb-Kenyon Law 


The Webb-Kenyon Law, entitled “An Act Divesting Intoxi- 
cating Liquors of their Interstate Character Under Certain Con- 
ditions,” provided: 


That the shipment or transportation in any manner or by any 
means whatsoever of any spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented or 
other intoxicating liquor of any kind including beer, ale or wine, 


a Se 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 537 


from one state, territory, or district of the United States into any 
other state, territory, or district of the United States, which said 
spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented or other intoxicating liquor 
is intended by any person interested therein to be received, pos- 
sessed, sold or in any manner used, either in the original package or 
otherwise, in violation of any such state, territory, or district of the 
United States enacted in the exercise of the police powers of such 
state, territory or district of the United States, is hereby prohibited. 


There was grave doubt as to the constitutionality of this act. 
The bill had been vetoed by President Taft, who had himself 
been a federal judge, supported by the opinion of the Attorney- 
General that it was unconstitutional, and had been passed over his 
veto. In the argument in this case the attorneys-general of fifteen 
states joined in presenting a brief in behalf of the statute. 

The law was upheld in the case of James Clark Distilling Co. 
v. Western Maryland Railroad Co. (242 U. S. 311), LO 17; 

Chief Justice White reviewed the legislative and judicial ante- 
cedents of the Webb-Kenyon Act. He said: 


To correct the great evil which was asserted to arise from the 
right to ship liquor into a state through the channels of interstate 
commerce and there receive and sell the same in the original package 
in violation of state prohibitions was indisputably the purpose which 
led to the enactment of the Wilson Law. There is no room for 
doubt that the Webb-Kenyon Law was enacted simply to extend 
that which was done in the Wilson Act, that is to say, its purpose 
was to prevent the immunity characteristic of interstate commerce 
from being used to permit the receipt of liquor through such com- 
merce in states contrary to their laws and thus in effect afford a 
means of subterfuge and indirection to set such laws at naught. 


The Leisy v. Hardin decision had declared that the power of 
Congress to regulate interstate commerce in intoxicants embraced 
the right to subject such movement to state prohibitions and that 
the freedom of intoxicants to move in interstate commerce and 
the protection of it from state control arose only from the absence 
of Congressional regulation and would endure only until Con- 
gress had otherwise provided. It said a subject matter which has 
been confided exclusively to Congress by the Constitution is not 
within the jurisdiction of the police power of the state unless 
placed there by Congressional action. 

As to the power of Congress to enact the Webb-Kenyon Law 
the Court said: 


It is not in the slightest degree disputed that if Congress had 
prohibited the shipment of all intoxicants in the channels of inter- 


538 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


state commerce and therefore had prevented all movements between 
the several states, such action would have been lawful becatise 
within the power to regulate which the Constitution conferred. 


Inasmuch as the larger power of complete prohibition of inter- 
state shipments comprehends the lesser one, the Court held that 
Congress possessed the power “to establish a regulation, which is 
what was done by the Webb-Kenyon Law, making it impossible 
for one state to violate the prohibitions of another state through 
the channels of interstate commerce.” 


Sustaining the Reed Amendment 


The next important case to be decided was that involving the 
Reed Amendment. This was an amendment to the Post Office 
Appropriation Act enacted March 3, 1917. It provided: 


Whoever shall order, purchase, or cause intoxicating liquors to be 
transported in interstate commerce except for scientific, sacramental, 
medicinal and mechanical purposes, into any State or Territory, the 
laws of which State or Territory prohibit the manufacture and sale 
therein of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes, shall be pun- 
ished as aforesaid; Provided, That nothing herein shall authorize 
the shipment of any liquor into any State contrary to the laws of 
such State. 


The Supreme Court, in United States v. Hill (248 U. S. 240), 
1918, said that Congress may forbid the interstate transportation 
of intoxicating liquor without regard to the policy of any State. 
It construed the Reed Amendment as not being limited in its ap- 
plication merely to importation for commercial purposes but as 
applying also to the transportation of liquor upon the person and 
for the personal use of an interstate passenger. As so construed 
it was upheld. 

In United States v. Simpson (252 U. S. 465), 1919, it was 
held that the transportation of intoxicating liquor by the owner 
for personal use in his own automobile into a prohibition state is 
interstate commerce and violates the Reed Amendment, if the 
liquor is not intended for any of the purposes excepted in the Act. 


War Time Prohibition Constitutional 


After a protracted effort, with hope deferred, Congress en- 
acted a War Time Prohibition Act which was approved Novem- 
ber 21, 1918, ten days after the armistice with Germany was 
signed. 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 539 


In the decision in the case of Hamilton v. Kentucky Distil- 
leries (252 U. S. 146), 1919, the Court upheld the War Time 
Prohibition Act in every respect. It was held as within the war 
power when passed, notwithstanding the cessation of hostilities 
under the Armistice, as a means of war efficiency and for the 
support and care of the army and navy during demobilization. 


Upholding the Volstead Law 


On October 28, 19109, Congress passed over the President’s 
veto the National Prohibition Act, known as the Volstead Law, 
which provided means for enforcing both the War Time Pro- 
hibition Act and the Eighteenth Amendment. 

In the case of Jacob Ruppert v. Caffey (251 U. S. 264), 
1920, there was involved that part of the National Prohibition 
Act which related to enforcing the War Time Prohibition Act. 

The Court said that the War Time Prohibition Act was valid 
and had not become invalid by a change of circumstances; also 
that Congress had the power to enact new prohibitions when the 
National Prohibition Act was passed, October 28, 1919, which 
was before the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. 

The Court held that the provision in the Volstead Law that 
“the words ‘beer, wine or other. intoxicating malt or vinous 
liquors’ in the War Prohibition Act shall be hereafter construed 
to mean any such beverages which contain one-half of one per 
centum or more by volume,” was constitutional. 

‘As a measure reasonably necessary to make the prohibition of 
intoxicating liquors effectual, Congress in the exercise of the 
war power may prohibit those liquors containing as much as one- 
half of one per cent of alcohol by volume even though they may 
not be in fact intoxicating. 

The war power of Congress is a broad power not merely to 
prohibit but to prevent the liquor traffic. It is as broad as the 
police power of the states as applied to the same subject. 

Congress has the power to “make all laws which shall be neces- 
sary and proper for carrying into execution’ the powers which it 
possesses. 

Since Congress has power to increase war efficiency by pro- 
hibiting the liquor traffic no reason appears why it should be 
denied the power to make its prohibition effective. 

As one of the chief points at issue in this case was whether 
Congress had the power to prohibit all beverage liquors containing 


540 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


over one-half of one per cent of alcohol, the grounds for the de- 
cision of the Court on this point are of vital interest. 
The Court, speaking by Justice Brandeis, said: 


The legislation and decisions of the highest courts of nearly all 
the States establish that it is deemed impossible to enforce either 
prohibitory or regulatory laws if liability or inclusion within the law 
is made to depend upon the issuable fact whether or not a particular 
liquor is intoxicating. In other words it clearly appears that a 
liquor law, to be capable of enforcement must, in the opinion of 
the legislatures and courts of the several States, be made to apply 
to all liquors of the species enumerated, like beer, ale or wine, 
regardless of the presence or degree of alcoholic content or if a more 
general description is used, such as distilled, rectified, spirituous, 
fermented, malt or brewed liquors, to all liquors within that general 
description regardless of alcoholic content; or to such of these 
liquors as contain a named percentage of alcohol; and often several 
such standards are combined so that certain specific and generic 
liquors are forbidden and such others as contain a given percentage 
of alcohol. 

A test often used to determine whether a beverage is to be deemed 
intoxicating within the meaning of the liquor law is whether it 
contains one-half of one per cent of alcohol by volume. A survey 
of the liquor laws of the States reveals that in seventeen States the 
test is either a list of enumerated beverages without regard to 
whether they contain any alcohol, or the presence of any alcohol 
in a beverage, regardless of quantity; in eighteen States it is the 
presence of as much or more than one-half of one per cent of 
alcohol; in six States one per cent of alcohol; in one State, the 
presence of the “alcoholic principle”; and in one State two per cent 
of alcohol. Thus in forty-two of the forty-eight States malt liquor 
containing over two per cent of alcohol by weight or volume is 
deemed, for the purpose of regulation or prohibition, intoxicating 
as a matter of law. Only one State [Rhode Island] has adopted a 
test as high as 2.75 per cent by weight or 3.4 per cent by volume. 
Only two States permit the intoxicating character of an enumerated 
liquor to be put in issue. In three other States the matter has not 
been made clear either by decision or legislation. The decisions of 
the courts as well as the actions of the legislatures make it clear— 
or, at least, furnish ground upon which Congress reasonably might 
conclude—that a rigid classification of beverages is an essential of 
either effective regulation or effective prohibition of intoxicating 
liquors. 

Purity Extract Co. v. Lynch (226 U.S. 192) determined that 
state legislation of this character is valid and set forth with clear- 
ness the constitutional ground upon which it rests. “When a State 
exerting its recognized authority undertakes to suppress what it is 


— ie 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 541 


free to regard as a public evil, it may adopt such measures having 
reasonable relation to that end as it may deem necessary to make its 
action effective. It does not follow that because a transaction sepa- 
rately considered is innocuous it may not be included in a prohibi- 
tion the scope of which is regarded as essential in the legislative 
judgment to accomplish a purpose within the admitted powers of 
the Government. ... 

“The State . ... must decide upon the measures that are needful 
for the protection of its people and having regard for the artifices 
which are used to promote the sale of intoxicants under guise 
of innocent beverages it would constitute an unwarranted departure 
from accepted principle to hold that the prohibition of the sale of all 
malt liquors, including the beverage in question, was beyond its 
reseryed power..:.".”? 

It is therefore clear both that Congress might reasonably have 
considered some definition of intoxicating liquor to be essential to 
effective enforcement of prohibition and also that the definition 
provided by the Volstead Act was not an arbitrary one. 


Upholding the Method of Ratification of the Eighteenth and 
Nineteenth Amendments 


During the period when the Eighteenth Amendment was being 
ratified there was considerable complaint by the liquor interests, 
and some who did not understand the Constitution, because the 
Amendment was not submitted to a direct vote of the people. 

In Ohio in November, 1918, by means of the referendum the 
liquor interests in an almost uncontested election secured the 
adoption of an amendment to the Ohio constitution extending the 
referendum to the ratification by the Legislature of proposed 
amendments to the Federal Constitution. By the provision thus 
adopted a ratification by the Legislature would not be binding 
until it should receive the votes of a majority in a referendum 
provided six per cent of the voters should file a petition for such 
a referendum within go days after the ratification by the Legisla- 
ture. 

A case was brought to test the validity of the Ohio referendum 
provision and it was declared unconstitutional in Hawke v. 
Smith (253 U. S. 221), 1920. 

The Court held that the Federal Constitution provides but two 
methods of ratification, either by the legislatures of three-fourths 
of the states, or by conventions in a like number of states, the 
choice of the two methods being determined by Congress. “Both 
methods of ratification, by legislatures or conventions, call for 


542 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


action by deliberative assemblies, representative of the people, 
which it was assumed would voice the will of the people.” 

The term “legislatures,” as used in the Federal Constitution 
means the deliberative representative bodies that make the laws 
for the respective states. While the power to legislate in the 
enactment of the laws of a state is derived from the people of the 
state, the power to ratify a proposed amendment to the Federal 
Constitution has its source in that Constitution. 

The Constitution makes no provision for voting upon a federal 
constitutional amendment by the people directly. 

The method of adopting the Eighteenth Amendment was there- 
fore not open to criticism. 

This case and a parallel case involving the Nineteenth Amend- 
ment for Woman Suffrage (Hawke v. Smith, 253 U. S. 231) 
were brought by George S. Hawke of Cincinnati who had been 
Prohibition nominee for Attorney-General in Ohio and they 
were argued before the Supreme Court by ex-Governor J. Frank 
Hanly of Indiana, the Prohibition nominee for President in the 
preceding election. 

As it resulted, the failure to have obtained a favorable de- 
cision in these cases would not have delayed the going into effect 
of censtitutional prohibition a single day, as, even if Ohio had not 
been included as one of the thirty-six ratifying states, a thirty- 
seventh state had ratified on the same day as the thirty-sixth. 
But this decision did vitally affect the date of the adoption of 
the Woman Suffrage Amendment. If it had not been for these 
decisions Ohio’s ratification of the Suffrage Amendment would 
not have been complete until the voters should have voted on it 
at the succeeding election which was on the same day as the 
presidential election of 1920. But as result of this decision, the 
Tennessee Legislature was able to disregard a provision of the 
Tennessee constitution, and ratify. If it had not been for the 
ratification of these two states it is very doubtful if the Nine- 
teenth Amendment would have been ratified in time to permit 
women to vote in the presidential election of 1920. 

Thus the Prohibition party, which was the first party to advo- 
cate woman suffrage was, through its late candidate for Presi- 
dent, a decisive factor in bringing about the final success of the 
suffrage movement as well as of the prohibition movement. 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 543 


Lhe Culminating Decision Upholding the Eighteenth Amend- 
ment and the Law for Its Enforcement 


The liquor interests did their utmost to prevent the Eighteenth 
Amendment from going into operation. There were seven cases, 
two of them brought by states, all of which sought an injunction 
against the execution of the Volstead Act. The liquor interests 
were represented by the ablest attorneys whom their money could 
employ. 

The decision completely upheld the Amendment and the Vol- 
stead Law at every point. The Court announced the following 
conclusions in the National Prohibition Cases, Rhode Island v. 
Palmer (253 U.'S..350) 1920: 


The National Prohibition Cases 


I. The adoption by both Houses of Congress, each by a two- 
thirds vote, of a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the 
Constitution sufficiently shows that the proposal was deemed neces- 
sary by all who voted for it. An express declaration that they 
regarded it as necessary is not essential. None of the resolutions 
whereby prior amendments were proposed contained such a 
declaration. 

2. The two-thirds vote in each House, which is required in pro- 
posing an amendment, is a vote of two-thirds of the members 
present—assuming the presence of a quorum—and not a vote of 
two-thirds of the entire membership present and absent. Missouri 
Pacific Railway Company v. Kansas, 248 U.S. 270. 

3. The referendum provisions of state constitutions and statutes 
cannot be applied, consistently with the Constitution of the United 
States, in the ratification or rejection of amendments to it. Hawke 
v. Smith, 253 U.S. 221, decided June 1, 1920. 

4. The prohibition of the manufacture, sale, transportation, im- 
portation and exportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage pur- 
poses, as embodied in the Eighteenth Amendment, is within the 
power to amend reserved by Article V of the Constitution, 

5. The Amendment, by lawful proposal and ratification, has be- 
come a part of the Constitution, and must be respected and given 
effect the same as other provisions of that instrument. 

6. The first section of the Amendment—the one embodying the 
prohibition—is operative throughout the entire territorial limits of 
the United States, binds all legislative bodies, courts, public officers, 
and individuals within those limits, and of its own force invalidates 
any legislative act—whether by Congress, by a state legislature, or 


544 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


by a territorial assembly—which authorizes or sanctions what the 
section prohibits. 

7. The second section of the Amendment—the one declaring “the 
Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to en- 
force this article by appropriate legislation”—does not enable Con- 
gress or the several states to defeat or thwart the prohibition, but 
only to enforce it by appropriate means. 

8. The words, “concurrent power,” in that section do not mean 
joint power, or require that legislation thereunder by Congress, to 
be effective, shall be approved or sanctioned by the several States 
or any of them; nor do they mean that the power to enforce is 
divided between Congress and the several States along the lines 
which separate or distinguish foreign and interstate commerce from 
intrastate affairs. 

9. The power confided to Congress by that section, while not 
exclusive, is territorially coextensive with the prohibition of the first 
section, embraces manufacture and other intrastate transactions as 
well as importation, exportation and interstate traffic, and is in no 
wise dependent on or affected by action or inaction on the part of 
the several States or any of them. 

10. That power may be exerted against the disposal for beverage 
purposes of liquor manufactured before the Amendment became 
effective just as it may be against subsequent manufacture for those 
purposes. In either case it is a constitutional mandate or prohibition 
that is being enforced. 

11. While recognizing that there are limits beyond which Con- 
gress cannot go in treating beverages as within its power of enforce- 
ment, we think those limits are not transcended by the provision of 
the Volstead Act, wherein liquor containing as much as one-half 
of one per cent of alcohol by volume and fit for use for beverage 
purposes are treated as within that power. Jacob Ruppert v. Caffey 
C25 Tain ty oOn) 


Chief Justice White, concurring in the decision, rendered an 
opinion setting forth his reasons for the conclusions reached. 

Since 1920 there have been decisions in a number of cases 
construing the Eighteenth Amendment and the laws enacted for 
its enforcement. Although repeatedly and vigorously attacked, 
these have been upheld by the United States Supreme Court on 
every important point. 


SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The three leading legal treatises on the subject are: 
Brack, H. C.—A Treatise on the Laws Regulating the Manufac- 
ture and Sale of Intoxicating Liquors, 1892, 711 pp. 


UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT 545 


WooLLen, W. W., and THorntTon, W. W.—Intoxicating 
Liquors; the Law Relating to the Traffic in Intoxicating 
Liquors and Drunkenness, 2 vols., 1910. 

BLAKEMORE—National Prohibition, the Volstead Act Annotated 
and Digest of National and State Prohibition Decisions, 
1923, rev. ed. 1925, I1OI pp. 

For a popular discussion of the attitude of the courts see two 
pamphlets by LEmuet D. Ltrty—The Saloon Before the Courts, 
and Bench vs. Bar. For a book amplifying the reason for his 
decision that the saloon is contrary to common law, see JUDGE 
SAMUEL R, ARTMAN—The Legalized Outlaw, 1908, 295 pp. For 
brief of Attorney-General Bingham of Indiana before Indiana 
Supreme Court, one of the best summaries up to that time, see 
Defender, August 15, 28, 29; September 5, 12, 19, 1907. 


Chapter XXVII 
THE LIQUOR POWER 


The Prohibitionists’ emphasis upon the dominance of the 
liquor issue was based not merely upon the social, economic or 
even moral aspect. It was because the liquor traffic had become 
a great organized power which was dominating and perverting 
the politics and government of the nation that the Prohibition 
party proclaimed the need of a political revolution to achieve a 
new independence. 

As compared to the narrow conception of the liquor question 
as one pertaining merely to the individual the governmental as- 
pects were as a mountain to a molehill. This chapter aims to 
present an outline of the magnitude of the liquor power and its 
political operations in the later years of the nineteenth century 
and the early years of the twentieth century. 


LIQUOR CAPITAL 


The capital invested in the manufacture of liquors increased, 
according to the United States census reports, from $28,534,317 
in 1860 to $771,516,000 in 1910.1. This increase was nearly ten 
times as fast as the population and nearly four times as fast as 
the national wealth. Of the total capitalization in 1910, $671,- 
158,000, or 87 per cent, was invested in the manufacture of malt 
liquors, $72,450,000 in the manufacture of spirits and $27,908,- 
000 in the manufacture of wines. Over go per cent was invested 
in the making of malt and vinous liquors and less than 10 per 
cent in the making of the stronger liquors. The overwhelming 
proportion of liquor capital was brewery capital. Accompany- 
ing the phenomenal increase in capital was a diminution in the 
number of manufacturing establishments resulting in a great con- 
centration of capital and the centralization of the industry in the 
hands of powerful financial interests possessing great monopoly 
power. In 1880 there were 2,191 fermented liquor manufac- 
turing establishments. In 1910 there were only 1,414, less than 
two-thirds as many, but these made nearly four and one-half 


_ tin 1870 it was $66,658,945; in 1880, $118,037,729; in 1890, $269,270,251, and 
In 1900, $457,674,087. 
546 


THE LIQUOR POWER 547 


times as much liquor. By 1914 about one hundred concerns made 
half of the beer. Consolidation and trustification characterized 
the whole liquor industry. The liquor trust was one of the most 
gigantic trusts in existence. 

Between 1888 and 1894 seventy-nine breweries were pur- 
chased by British capitalists and consolidated into twenty-four 
concerns having a capitalization of $91,000,000. That was equal 
to about two-fifths of the total capital invested in breweries in 
1890. Including the German owned breweries, more than halt 
the brewery capital was controlled by foreigners. Including the 
foreign born brewers recently come from Germany, the large ma- 
jority of brewery capital was controlled by those who were 
notoriously un-American. 

Profits were unusually large. Only a small amount of raw 
material was used and the wages paid were very much smaller 
than other large industries in proportion to output. In 1909 only 
62,920 wage earners were employed in the entire manufacture 
of all kinds of liquor. The difference between the cost of pro- 
duction and the charge to the consumer provided a large margin 
out of which could be paid large revenues to the national, state 
and local governments, thereby deceiving many voters into sup- 
porting the perpetuation of the traffic, and further to provide 
unusual profits from which corruption funds could be supplied 
to corrupt and control politics and government. As a result of 
the vast capital involved and the immense profits to be derived 
liquor sales were pushed by all the means that a brazen enterprise 
and an unscrupulous ingenuity combined with moral callousness 
could devise. This promotion was eloquently described by ex- 
Senator Windom, who had been Secretary of the Treasury in the 
Cabinets of Presidents Garfield and Arthur, in an address de- 
livered in 1887: 


The saloon creates a demand where none before existed that it 
may profit by supplying that demand. It artificially stimulates an 
evil habit that it may thrive by pandering to it. It methodically 
breeds debauchery, poverty, anarchy, and crime for pay. It pur- 
posely seeks to multiply the number of drinkers, and hence of 
drunkards. It invades every new community, demands tribute 
from every home, and lies in wait with fresh enticements for each 
new generation of youth. . . . Each one of our two hundred thou- 
sand drinking places forms a distinct center of aggressive forces 
and skilful devices for spreading the drink habit among men. Every 
plausible temptation and solicitation that trained talent can suggest 
are used to entrap the young, the ignorant, the toiling, and the home- 


548 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


less, with the knowledge that a customer once secured is usually 
a customer for life. . .. Experience indicates that four-fifths of 
American drinking and drunkenness is due in the first instance not 
to any natural appetite of our people, but to the presence and sleep- 
less efforts of this gigantic enginery, working seven days a week 
and twenty-four hours a day, unrestrained by any scruple and 
everywhere contemptuous of public and private right. 


THE LIQUOR CONSUMPTION 


The traffic’s aggressive trade promotion supplemented by the 
habit-forming nature of alcohol was responsible for the astound- 
ing increase in the per capita consumption of liquor. In 1850 the 
per capita consumption of liquor was 4.08 gallons. It mounted 
to 22.81 gallons in 1911. In the decade of the seventies the 
average annual per capita consumption was 8.79 gallons, in the 
eighties 13.21, in the nineties 17.11 gallons, in I90I-I9I0, it 
was 20.58 and in the four-year period 1911-1914 it averaged 
22.58. The large increase was in the consumption of beer, but, 
contrary to common impression, from 1900 on the per capita 
consumption of the stronger liquors was rapidly increasing and 
rose considerably above that of the period 1870-1900. ‘The 
average annual per capita consumption of spirits in the seventies 
was 1.39; in the eighties 1.34; in the nineties, due largely to the 
financial depression, it was 1.25; but in IQOI-19IO it rose to 
1.41 and in IQII-1914 to 1.46. 

The consumption of wine in the same periods respectively was 
47, .48, .38, .54, and .585, per capita, consumption having in- 
creased about one-fourth. 

The per capita consumption of beer practically trebled in a 
third of a century. In the seventies the average annual consump- 
tion was 6.93, in the eighties, 11.38; in the nineties, 15.48; in 
IQOI-I1910, 18.62; and in I91I-1914, 20.53 gallons. 

The brewers were largely responsible for the promotion of the 
sale of all kinds of liquors. They established saloons everywhere 
they could be made to pay. <A large proportion of the saloons 
were owned or controlled by the breweries. Of certain cities 
where brewery ownership was investigated,—in St. Louis they 
owned 65 per cent; in Kansas City, 70 per cent; in Toledo, 75 
per cent; and in Indianapolis, Minneapolis and St. Paul the brew- 
eries owned or controlled 90 per cent of the saloons. Later 
when the saloon was outlawed in many communities, the brew- 
eries developed a large, direct to the consumer trade in bottled 


THE LIQUOR POWER 549 


beer. At the 1914 convention of the United States Brewers’ 
Association, the large increase in beer sales, nearly ten million 
barrels in five years, a period of local option, was attributed to 
the remarkable development of the bottled trade. Prior to the 
passage of the bone dry laws beginning in 1914, direct sales 
could be carried on wherever the expressman made deliveries. 
No home was free from the bombardment of the brewers’ 
solicitations, 

Keduced to the basis of the absolute alcohol consumed, the per 
capita consumption was over 63 per cent greater in 191 I-IQI4 
than in the seventies. There was a continuous and appalling 
increase in the consumption of alcohol. Each succeeding decade 
became worse and worse. In the seventies the average annual per 
capita consumption was approximately .98s of a gallon; in the 
eighties, 1.153; in the nineties, 1.273; in 1901-1910, 1.501; and 
in IQII-I914 it was 1.611.” 

It is to be observed that in 1911-1914 malt and vinous liquors, 
or colloquially beer and wine, comprised over 93 per cent of the 
volume of intoxicating liquors and contained nearly 60 per cent 
of the alcohol. Beer alone furnished over 90 per cent of the 
volume and over 55 per cent of the alcohol. Expressed in gallons 
the total annual consumption, in millions, omitting all figures be- 
low millions, in 1850 was 94; in 1860, 202; in 1870, 296; in 1880, 
505; in 1890, 972; in 1900, 1,349; in 1910, 2,015; and in 1914 
the total was 2,252,272,765 gallons. More than two and a quarter 
billions of gallons of alcoholic liquor were poured into the 
mouths of human beings in the United States in 1914, the year 
of the maximum total consumption. 

In cubic contents the liquor would occupy over 301,000,000 
cubic feet and would fill a ditch six feet deep, three feet wide and 
over 3,167 miles long; more than long enough to reach from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific in the widest part of the United States, 
farther than the distance by rail from New York to Seattle. 


THE DRINK BILL 


Without making allowance for augmented sales through wide- 
spread adulteration, but based upon the government figures and 


? The figures regarding absolute alcohol are arrived at by estimating, roughly, 
distilled liquors as containing 45 per cent of alcohol by volume, vinous liquors 
as containing 14 per cent and malt liquors as containing 4.25 per cent by 
volume. Some authorities give the amount of alcohol in the various beverages 
by weight but when given in gallons the volume is more appropriate. The per- 
centage by volume is from about 13 to 23 per cent higher than by weight. For 
example, 2.75 per cent beer by weight is equivalent to 3.4 per cent by volume. 


550 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


making conservative estimates as to the prices, the drink bill for 
the year ending June 30, 1907, amounted to $2,275,070,857.° 
In 1913 it amounted to $2,455,000,000.* 

Many comparisons have been made with the drink bill. In 
1913 it was equal to more than two and a half times the gross 
disbursements of the federal government, and was equal to more 
than six-sevenths of the total revenues of all branches of govern- 
ment, national, state and local throughout the country. The drink 
bill far exceeded the value of the imports and in some years ex- 
ceeded the entire exports of the United States. 

Back in 1898, The Voice presented tables showing that the 
drink bill of the United States in 1895, which then was $962,- 
000,000, equaled more than five times the average annual cost of 
all the wars of the whole world during the ninety years from 
1790 to 1880. The figures for the costs of the wars of the world 
had been compiled by Munhall, the eminent English statistical 
authority.” 

In the eighteen years ending June 30, 1915, the total drink 
bill of the United States amounted to more than the production 
of gold and silver combined throughout the entire world, from 
the discovery of America down to 1915. The eighteen-year drink 
bill amounted to $30,710,000,000, while the total world’s gold 
and silver production from 1493 down to, and including 1914, 
was given in the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 
I9Q15 as $30,611,000,000.° 

The liquor bill entailed not only the direct waste of the money 
spent for intoxicants, but the indirect cost probably equaled, if 
it did not exceed, the direct cost. Among the items of indirect 
cost were (a) the loss of health, loss of time, loss of productive 
capacity, even the loss of lives of the drinkers; (b) the cost to 
society for the care of the criminals, paupers, insane and others 
incapacitated by alcohol; (c) the losses resulting from alcohol’s 
effects in lessening wages, coarsening the tastes, lowering the 
standards of living and curtailing the market for legitimate com- 
modities; (d) the cost of bad government which the people had 
to pay for as the result of the liquor power’s domination of 
politics. 

In terms of per capita expenditure, the average annual cost to 


3 The National Prohibitionist, March 5, 1908. 

4Vindicator, February 26, 1915, and February 18, 1916. As to method of 
computation, see Vindicator, March 20, 1914. 

5 The Voice, April 21, 1808. 

6 Estimates for 1898-1908 by George B. Waldron, in Prohibition Year Book, 
Lon p. 17; for 1909-1915, W. P. F, Ferguson in the Vindicator, February 18, 
1916. 


THE LIQUOR POWER 551 


every man, woman and child in the nation rose from $11.13 in 
1880 to $14.41 in 1890, $15.36 in 1900, $24.59 in IgIO, and 
$24.72 in 1914.” 

Considering that only a very small proportion of women and 
children drank, and that probably at least one-third of the men 
were abstemious, the average bill of the drinkers was much 
larger. In 1887 the United States Bureau of Statistics estt- 
mated that the drinking of liquor was confined to 25.5 per cent 
of the population. That meant that the drinkers on the average 
spent nearly four times the per capita average of the whole popu- 
lation, or $56.51 in 1890, $60.24 in 1900, $96.43 in IgI0, and 
$96.94 in I9QI4. 

Comparing the average expenditure with income, in 1900, 
according to leading authorities on wages, at least one-half of 
the adult male wage earners earned less than $436.° In other 
words, the average drink bill of the drinkers was equivalent to 
nearly one-seventh of the amount of income which half the adult 
male wage earners of the United States received. This astound- 
ing waste of earnings and waste of capacity produced economic, 
social and moral effects simply appalling. 


THE LIQUOR ORGANIZATIONS 


There were several large national liquor organizations pos- 
sessing large financial resources, and a number of smaller ones. 
In nearly every license state there was a state organization, and 
local organizations existed in the principal cities, all working 
together for the advancement of their interests. The best known 
was the United States Brewers’ Association, organized in 1862. 
Next in importance was the National Wholesale Liquor Dealers’ 
Association whose Protective Bureau was so active in defeating 
prohibition in the eighties, and which was active thereafter 
through the years. The National Retail Liquor Dealers’ As- 
sociation joined together into local organizations the local retail 
dealers in the various cities and counties, these being represented 
at state conventions, which in turn sent delegations to their na- 
tional conferences. 

There were also joint committees and interlocking arrange- 
ments between brewers, wholesalers and retailers. Besides these 
there were such liquor organizations as the Model License League, 


7 The per capita consumption and expenditure for 1914 based on the popula- 
tion of the United States and territories for 1914 as given in United States 
Statistical Abstract, 1921. 

8 Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems, p. 158. 


552 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


later absorbed by the brewers, the National Association of Wine 
and Spirit Representatives, the United States Manufacturers’ 
and Merchants’ Association, the Personal Liberty League and a 
number of other societies scattered over the country, some na- 
tional, some local, some initiated by the larger organizations 
with names made to order for particular campaigns, such as Tax- 
payers’ Unions, Business Men’s Leagues, Manufacturers and 
Dealers’ Clubs, and so on. The National Association of Com- 
merce and Labor was a camouflaged agency of the United States 
Brewers’ Association which expended large amounts of money 
in the years 1913 to 1917. One influential local organization was 
the United Societies for Local Self-government in Chicago, 
made up largely of organized groups of foreigners. Even after 
prohibition was placed in the Constitution there were over forty 
wet organizations fighting national prohibition. 

References to the earlier history of the United States Brewers’ 
Association have been made in Chapters III, VI and X. Some of 
the later activities were revealed in 1918 by a United States Sen- 
ate Committee which investigated brewing and liquor interests 
and German propaganda.°® 

Although that investigation did not go as deeply into the 
political activities of the liquor interests as it might have done, 
it did gather an astounding array of facts. 

It was brought out that the regular dues of the United States 
Brewers’ Association had been at some periods one-half a cent 
and at some periods one cent a barrel for each barrel of beer 
manufactured, with additional special assessments from time 
to time. 

The brewers affiliated in the United States Brewers’ Associa- 
tion represented at different times from 60 to 80 per cent of the 
beer output, which in 1914 amounted to over 66,000,000 barrels. 
In 1913 a special assessment of three cents a barrel annually was 
agreed upon. This, with the regular dues, probably provided a 
fund of about two million dollars a year as in this period the 
members of the U. S. B. A. made about 80 per cent of the beer. 

In addition, in the various states there were state brewers’ 
associations which also had dues and special assessments. These 
varied from two and one-half cents per barrel in New Jersey, 
where the danger of prohibitory legislation was not regarded 
acute, to sixty-five cents per barrel in some states where prohibi- 


9 See Brewing and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda, 
Report and Hearings of the Subcommittee on the Judiciary, United States Senate 
Sixty-sixth Congress, First Session, 1919, Senate Documents, Vols. 2, 3, and 4. 


THE LIQUOR POWER 553 


tion campaigns were pending, such as Texas and Colorado, and 
as high as $1.10 per barrel in Nebraska. “For the eight years 
preceding 1915. Nebraska brewers never paid less than sixty-five 
cents per barrel and from that up to $1.10.” 

In the one state of Pennsylvania $300,000 was raised by the 
state brewers’ association alone for political purposes in the elec- 
tion year 1914. In four years their known funds amounted to 
$922,000. 

In Ohio it was admitted that nearly a million dollars was spent 
in the five years preceding 1913. The liquor interests exultingly 
announced that they had secured a legislature overwhelmingly wet 
in spite of a large majority of the counties being dry under the 
county option law. ‘They also pointed to the fact that they had 
selected a majority of the delegates to the Ohio constitutional 
convention of I912, a convention which wrote license into the 
constitution of the state, something which had not been accom- 
plished in any other state.** 

In addition the brewers frequently made special contributions. 
Preceding the Texas campaign of 1911 Brewer Busch wrote from 
Pasadena, California: 


I will not mind to give $100,000 extra if necessary. Missouri 
recently [1910] went through a most strenuous campaign winning 
out by an enormous majority. Well, you can hardly imagine the 
cost of that campaign. If we sacrifice one-half our earnings in 
I9II in order to make up this campaign fund it is not so serious.” 

Had the brewers over the country subscribed fifty cents a 
barrel, less than that given in several states, they could have 
raised corruption funds of $33,000,000 annually. Most of the 
brewers being affiliated the assessment would have been uniform 
and could have been shifted to the consumer like a uniform tax 
and the drinkers would have been compelled to pay it, as they did 
the license fees and the other costs of the industry, in the form 
of either higher prices, smaller glasses or more foam produced 
by the use of the beer pump. 

Besides their own assessments, the liquor organizations prac- 
tically compelled not only their allied interests to contribute but 
they also attempted a system of compelling all from whom they 
bought goods, whether bottles, harness for their horses, or pickles 
for the saloon free lunch, to deduct one per cent of their bills for 
liquor propaganda purposes. 


19 Brewing and Liquor Interests, etc., Vol. 3, p. 1170. 
11 Jbid., p. 1191. 
12 Congressional Record, July 6, 1917, Vol. 55, Part 5, p. 4727. 


554 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The results of the Senate investigation were summarized as 
follows: *° 


With regard to the conduct and activities of the brewing and 
liquor interests, the committee is of the opinion that the record 
clearly establishes the following facts: 

1. That they have furnished large sums of money for the pur- 
pose of secretly controlling newspapers and periodicals. 

2. That they have undertaken to, and have frequently succeeded 
in controlling primaries, elections and political organizations. 

3. That they have contributed enormous sums of money to politi- 
cal campaigns in violation of the federal statutes and the statutes of 
several of the states. 

4. That they have exacted pledges from candidates for public 
office prior to the elections. 

5. hat for the purpose of influencing public opinion they have 
attempted and partly succeeded in subsidizing the public press. 

6. That to suppress and coerce persons hostile to, and to compel 
support for, them they have resorted to an extensive system of 
boycotting unfriendly American manufacturing and mercantile 
concerns. 

7. That they have created their own political organization in 
many states and in smaller political units for the purpose of carry- 
ing into effect their own political will and have financed the same 
with large contributions and assessments. 

8. That with a view of using it for their own political purpose 
they contributed large sums of money to the German-American 
Alliance, many of the membership of which were disloyal and 
unpatriotic. 

9g. That they organized clubs, leagues and corporations of various 
kinds for the purpose of secretly carrying on their political activities 
without having their interest known to the public. 

10. That they improperly treated the funds expended for political 
purposes as a proper expenditure of their business and consequently 
failed to return the same for taxation under the revenue laws of 
the United States. 

11. That they undertook through a cunningly conceived plan of 
advertising and subsidization to control and dominate the foreign 
language press of the United States. 

12. That they have subsidized authors of recognized standing in 
literary circles to write articles of their selection for many standard 
periodicals. 

13. That for many years a working agreement existed between 
the brewing and distilling interests of the country by the terms of 
which the brewing interests contributed two-thirds and the distilling 


13 Brewing and Liquor Interests, etc., Vol. 1, p. 5. 


THE LIQUOR POWER 555 


interests one-third of the political expenditures used by the joint 
interests. 


THE LIQUOR POWER IN POLITICS 


The liquor question was preeminently a political question be- 
cause the liquor power dominated the government. A large volume 
is needed for an adequate treatise on liquor in politics which 
might be entitled, “The Pathology of Putrid Politics.’ Herein 
is space only for a summary of the operations of the liquor power 
with a few brief illustrations, an analysis of the factors under- 
lying its power, and a brief discussion regarding its consequences 
to government. 

I. The liquor power repeatedly defeated candidates and parties 
who would not comply with its demands, Governors, senators, 
representatives, legislators, mayors, candidates of high and low 
degree were its victims. From Governor Talbot of Massachusetts 
in the seventies, Governor St. John of Kansas, Senator Windom 
of Minnesota, and a score of Congressmen in the eighties, down to 
a large group of men like Governor Folk of Missouri, and Gov- 
ernor Harris of Ohio about 1908, and others later, there were 
numerous able men whom it drove from public life.** 

2. It subsidized political parties, furnishing funds to both 
parties in the same campaign. For example, in Kentucky, a close 
state, it was acknowledged that the liquor interests supplied more 
funds to each party than could be used legitimately. Liquor men 
boasted that they were the chief providers of the sinews of war 
to politicians.*® 

3. It mobilized the saloon vote, the foreign vote and the 
ignorant vote and wielded these groups to suit its purpose. 
here were multitudinous instances. One official investigation re- 
vealing the operations of the traffic was in the Texas cases in 
1915, wherein the Attorney-General of Texas brought action 
against seven brewery corporations for violating the election and 
anti-trust laws. They were fined a total of $281,000 in addition 
to court costs. ‘The evidence showed that there had been illegal 
payment of poll taxes, illegal and criminal operations in local op- 
tion elections all over Texas, most nauseating activities in the elec- 
tion of officials both local and state, the brazen purchase of the 
Mexican vote, the debauchery of the negro voters, and an effort to 


14 Prohibition Year Book, 1911, p. 129, gives a list of some of those “Felled 
by the Liquor Assassin.” 


15 Minutes of Executive Session of United States Brewers’ Association, 1913. 


556 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


control the farmers and organized labor. Furthermore, the liquor 

‘interests had boasted of the relations between the brewers and 
commercial clubs, had boasted of owning and controlling news- 
papers and had even boasted of their power over the courts of 
Texas. Men had been selected for office with no thought for 
their fitness other than that they supported the saloon.” 

4. It corrupted great masses of voters. Nearly every investi- 
gation of graft and political corruption in cities large and small 
revealed the liquor traffic as the chief source of corruption. A 
grand jury investigation at Danville, Illinois, a city of 28,000 
people, in 1911 reported, in addition to go licensed saloons, nearly 
200 dens of vice including large numbers of blind pigs, police 
protected, liquor selling dives and gambling hells winked at by 
the authorities and utilized by the dominant political machine to 
keep itself in power. By means of such an organized system of 
vice and drink, a horde of venal voters, conservatively estimated 
to be from 20 to 25 per cent of the entire citizenship, was kept 
available for every emergency by the saloon trained lieutenants 
of the men higher up.** 

Where it could not win through the force of the numbers 
of the liquor horde it terrorized politicians through its threat to 
wield the balance of power. Like a giant it bestrode the center 
of the political teeter-board and threw its weight now to the Re- 
publican party and now to the Democratic as suited its purpose. 

6. It debauched politics. Many state political conventions 
were places of carousal. The national presidential nominating 
conventions were characterized as ‘quadrennial debauches.” At 
the Republican national convention in 1896 “hundreds were howl- 
ing drunk every night and some were on a spree all the week.” 
At one hotel bar, half a block long, ten barkeepers were busy all 
day and all night. At another bar sometimes 200 men were 
clamoring for drinks all at once. Drunken men supporters of 
contending candidates for the presidential nomination got into a 
fist fight and pummeled each other like wild savages. Likewise 
the presidential inaugurations especially of 1889, 1893 and 1897 
were scenes of disgraceful debauchery. At the inauguration in 
1897 it was reported that 4,000 bartenders were required to supply 
the bibulous in Washington. In 1913 conditions were far from 
satisfactory. 

The adjournments of Congress and of the state legislatures 
were occasions when Bacchus was enthroned. The Illinois Legis- 


16 The Brewerics and Texas Politics, 2 vols. A summary of the evidence is 
given in Congressional Record for July 6, 1917, Vol. 55, Part 5, p. 4727. 
17 Prohibition Year Book, I9II, p. 149. 


THE LIQUOR POWER 557 


cature of 1909 closed with a bipartisan drunk, disgraceful but 
described as not so hilarious as at the adjournment of some pre- 
vious sessions. 

7. The liquor power controlled the channels of legislation. 
Legislative committees dealing with the prohibition question 
were usually so constituted as to be wet. In one Congress the 
committee long sought by the temperance organizations was con- 
stituted 6 to 3 in favor of liquor. In Minnesota in one session 
of the Legislature the chief attorney of the biggest brewery in 
the state was made chairman of the Temperance Committee and 
in another session that committee was constituted eight to one 
against the dry bills. The liquor power would dictate who would 
be Speaker, the Speaker would appoint the committees and the 
committees would determine the fate of proposed legislation. In 
the Sixty-first Congress, ending in 1911, the three most important 
committees in the House were composed of men notoriously op- 
posed to everything of a temperance or prohibition character. 

8. It dominated the politics and government of large cities 
almost absolutely. In New York Tammany politics was a syno- 
nym for liquor politics. In the eight-year period 1886 to 1894 
the section of New York City below Fortieth Street, the financial 
and commercial center of America, elected 57 liquor dealers as 
aldermen, and the eighteen assembly districts in that section sent 
30 liquor dealers to the state Assembly, many of them over and 
over again. 

In Philadelphia the Republican ring was quite as bad, if not 
worse. 

Cincinnati was ruled for years by a notorious political boss 
who had been the proprietor of a saloon known by the descriptive 
name of “Murderer’s Corner Saloon.” More than once he de- 
termined who should be Governor of the State of Ohio and also 
who should be United States Senator. For some years he was 
Ohio’s representative on the Republican National Committee. 

9. In the cities the liquor power controlled the lower courts 
and the police, and prevented the establishment of justice. It pro- 
tected the underworld against prosecution and paralyzed the hand 
of government against itself. Officers whose duty it was to 
enforce the law owed their election to those who wanted the 
law violated. The result was, it was almost impossible to get 
convictions. At Albany in 1894 out of 176 grand jurors selected 
to investigate graft and official corruption, 39 were saloon- 
keepers. At Cleveland in 1899 and 1900, of the 798 saloon- 
keepers who were arrested for violating the law but 61 were ever 


558 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


tried, and of these only 13 were even fined. Moreover, of the 13, 
all but five were men who came in and decided not to fight. 
The five cases in which there were convictions were tried before 
so-called vacation judges.** At Pontiac, Illinois, a comparatively 
small city, out of 31 cases of violation of restrictive features of 
license laws, with evidence absolutely incontrovertible, only one 
man was convicted. 

10. It syndicated the exploitation of human weakness and 
provided official protection for commercialized vice, gambling 
and the habit-forming drug traffic. The combination of these 
underworld elements frequently controlled the administration of 
cities. Said the St. Lowis Daily Republic in 1888: 


The groggery, the gambling house and the brothel control the 
city’s affairs and openly boast their power, and woe to the man who 
by fair deeds and respect for his cath of office invites their enmity. 
He is crushed without mercy and a new pliant figurehead set up in 
his place.?® 


11. The liquor power waged a perpetual rebellion against the 
Jaw. It did not respect even the minor restrictions by which it 
was sought to be hedged about. It was always inherently law- 
less. Violation of law became the normal condition of affairs. 
In Philadelphia in 1888 out of 3,441 applicants for license the 
police reported that 3,000 were known violators of the law. 

Almost no attention was paid to the laws against selling liquor 
to minors. On the other hand, there were many saloons which 
made a specialty of it. In I910 an investigation was made by 
the Juvenile Protective Association and two other organizations 
of the extent of the violation of law in the selling of liquor to 
minors in Chicago. About 130 saloons in different parts of the 
city were observed and at the rate they were selling it was esti- 
mated that there were 20,000 violations daily in Chicago. Over 
a third of the minors to whom liquor was sold were girls. A 
large proportion were under fourteen years of age and many were 
under eleven.” 

Little attempt was made even to enforce the laws requiring the 
taking out of a state license to sell liquor. In Philadelphia at 
various times there were from 1,000 to 7,000 illegal saloons. At 
one time an outside investigation definitely located and mapped 
over 1,000. In New York City in 1897 there were four times as 


many bootleggers, those who had taken out federal permits but 
18 Cleveland Leader, January 29, 1901. 
19 For a discussion of the connection between certain political organizations 
and vice, see C. E. Merriam, The American Party System, p. 147. 
20 National Prohibitionist, August 10, I911. 


THE LIQUOR POWER 559 


not state licenses, as there were in the entire state of Maine. In 
Massachusetts an investigation disclosed that in r910 there were 
1,614 illegal liquor sellers who had paid the federal tax but 
not the state license. This was more than half of the number 
of licensed places of which there were 2,972. There was one 
unlicensed place which paid the federal tax for each 1,497 of the 
population in license cities and towns, while in the no-license 
cities and towns there was only one for each 3,557 of the popula- 
tion. In the District of Columbia in 1899 there were 436 more 
persons who paid the federal tax than paid the local license fee. 
There were 195 druggists but a number of these paid the local 
wholesale license fee leaving about half as many bootleggers as 
there were licensed places, of which there were 641. 

At one time the Voice took a census of the “White Chapel” 
district occupying ten squares in the center of Washington, D. 
C., and 109 houses of ill fame were found, all selling without a 
license although 61 of them had paid the federal tax. 

In Minneapolis and St. Paul an investigation of brewery-owned 
saloons in 1913 showed that breweries had bought property for 
blind-pig purposes and for houses of ill fame, placing agents in 
charge of the same. Lawlessness did not begin with prohibition. 
The liquor traffic was always inherently lawless. 

The lawlessness of the liquor traffic was well-nigh universal. 
Sometimes it would break out with indescribable fury. One of 
the worst race riots in the history of the country occurred at 
East St. Louis in 1917. United States Senator Lawrence Y. 
Sherman of Illinois made an investigation of its causes and sub- 
sequently aroused the Senate by his burning words: 


The principal source of the vile, the fetid, the corrosive element 
that blazed the way in disorder and wrote the story of blood across 
the sky over East St. Louis are the infernal, lawless, damnable 
saloons that have infested the town and blighted the community 
famyearay). i). 

I have no words of apology for the slaughter that has happened 
there of American citizens who under the full panoply of the laws 
of their country have been brutally outraged, taken into alleys and 
shot with revolvers, beaten to death with bludgeons, burned in their 
own homes and fleeing to an opera house for safety, have had it 
burned and wrecked over their heads, with the result that thirty-four 
charred corpses have been taken from the ruins... . 

It is something that ought never to happen and would never 
happen except for the inherent defect that is lurking in our system— 
the increasing contempt for law and order that is springing up all 
over this country and resulting ina grand procession of criminals. 


560 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


It is the saloon-keepers of East St. Louis and their kind who lead 
the van of every lawless movement and breed and spew their in- 
famous vermin upon every community where they are suffered to 
exist. I ama “bone dry” Senator from now on. ”* 


12. It even assumed the prerogative of a super-government 
and if the constituted officers of government occasionally or 
sporadically sought to carry out their oaths of office and at- 
tempted to enforce the law the liquor power withstood the 
authority of government and did it openly and sometimes 
derisively. 

When Theodore Roosevelt as police commissioner of New 
York City in 1895 sought to close the saloons on Sunday most 
of them refused to close, unless compelled to do so, until after the 
Wine, Beer and Liquor Dealers’ Association had held a meeting 
and formally resolved that on and after the following Sunday 
they would close their places on Sunday as required by law. 
Similarly, twenty years later, in 1915, when the mayor of Chi- 
cago issued an order that the 7,000 saloons of that city should 
obey the law and close on Sunday the local liquor dealers would 
not consent to obey until after a delegate was sent to New York 
to consult with liquor’s general staff, the leaders of the United 
States Brewers’ Association, who advised giving in. The man- 
date of the liquor power was more effective than that of the 
mayor of the city of Chicago or of the laws of Illinois. 

13. To cap the climax the liquor power silenced candidates 
for the Presidency itself, if it did not elicit their actual com- 
pliance. 

In 1884 James G. Blaine, of Maine, was the Republican presi- 
dential nominee. In September, in the midst of the national 
campaign, Maine held a state election for state officers in which 
the people also voted upon the adoption of a state prohibition 
constitutional amendment which was adopted by a vote of three 
to one. Blaine voted at the election but refused to vote upon 
the amendment, although he had acknowledged that prohibition 
had made Maine “the soberest and most moral community among 
Anglo-Saxon people the world over.”’ He was silenced. 

In 1892 Grover Cleveland was the Democratic candidate, after 
having been elected in 1884 and defeated in 1888. Washington 
Hesing, the editor of the Staats Zeitung and representative of 
the brewery interests, went to Mr, Cleveland demaading on pain 
of defeat that he insert in his letter of acceptance a declaration 
against “sumptuary laws” and asserting that his failure to do 

21 Congressional Record, July 5, 1917, p. 4701. 


THE LIQUOR POWER 561 


that in 1888 had lost him the election. Cleveland, who in his 
first term had signed the temperance instruction bill and by execu- 
tive order had prohibited the liquor traffic in Alaska, and who 
had made a reputation among friends and foes for political 
courage, yielded to the threat and complied with the demand. 
Hesing subsequently was rewarded for his part in throwing the 
rum vote to the Democracy by being appointed postmaster at 
Chicago.” 

In his young manhood William McKinley, in 1874, in a state 
campaign in Ohio made some very strong declarations against 
the license system. 

Twenty years later, when as Governor of Ohio he was ambi- 
tious to become President and when a moderate local option bill 
sought by the Anti-Saloon League was before the Ohio Legisla- 
ture, the Cleveland Plain Dealer described him as “morbidly fear- 
ful of the temperance question” and stated that he had advised 
his warmest friends and supporters in the Legislature to leave the 
liquor question strictly alone. He also was silenced. 

These men all held high office and passed off the stage of 
American politics, one slain by an alcoholic degenerate, leaving 
the liquor traffic more firmly entrenched than when they entered. 
And the indescribable tragedy of it was that millions of Ameri- 
can citizens were being destroyed for time and eternity. 


ANALYSIS OF LIQUOR’S POWER 


Among the factors underlying liquor’s power in politics were: 

I. The degradation of voters by alcohol. 

2. The saloon as a political center. 

3. The liquor vote, mobile, controllable, corruptible and elastic. 

4. The effective, continuous and nation-wide organization of 
the liquor traffic willing to use all kinds of questionable and 
corrupt methods. 

5. The incentive to control politics because of the close rela- 
tions between the liquor traffic and the government due to the 
internal revenue and license systems and because of the desire to 
obtain freedom from regulatory harassments and to secure im- 
munity from prosecution for violation of law. 

6. The complexity of our political system which rendered the 
political machines inevitable. 

7. The balance of power made possible by the closeness of 


22 See Voice, October 25, 1894. 


562 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the vote between the two parties and the partisanship of most of 
the voters. 

8. The strategy of the liquor power in dividing its opponents 
and concentrating its votes for its own candidates in areas where 
it was largely in a minority. 

9g. A partisan alignment in which both parties sought to re- 
tain the liquor vote, often going to the extent of actually bidding 
for it. 

10. The triple alliance between the liquor power, the predatory 
interests and the political machines forming a combination 
which multiplied the strength of the liquor power. 

Amplifying the above factors: 

1. The foundation of the rum power, as it was frequently 
called, was the fact that the alcohol traffic was spawning a de- 
generate vote. Alcohol debauched and degraded great masses of 
voters. It stupefied their brains, dulled their intellects, warped 
their judgments, weakened their wills and dissolved their con- 
sciences. It reduced many to the position where their votes 
could be controlled or corrupted. It rendered them susceptible 
to mob influence. Suffrage being universal, the worst alcoholic 
inebriate had a vote just as much as the noblest citizen. Even in 
the higher strata of society there were many whose votes were 
influenced by the appetite for alcohol. 

2. Almost every saloon was a political center where a greater 
or less number of voters could be controlled. In the industrial 
communities the saloon absorbed the unemployed time of large 
numbers of men. It was a congregating place where politics was 
discussed and where there was developed a like-mindedness of a 
low grade and an alcoholic cohesiveness which was deliverable at 
the ballot-box. In the earlier period the saloon was a center for 
political meetings. In 1884 out of 1,002 primary and other 
political meetings held in the 24 assembly districts in New York 
City 633 were held in saloons and 86 others next door to a 
saloon.”* 

The saloon was used as a recruiting place by politicians. Not 
only local politicians catered to it but frequently candidates for 
Governor or Congress would make the rounds of the saloons and 
set up the drinks. In Connecticut a candidate for Governor, sub- 
sequently elected, did this on Sunday notwithstanding that it was 
contrary to the state law for the saloons to be open on Sunday. 

The saloon was also a center for political orders. One illus- 


23 Investigation by the Church Temperance Society; Waldron, Handbook of 
Prohibition, p. 120. 


THE LIQUOR POWER 563 


tration was in Illinois in 1908 when a distiller who was director 
of liquor politics in the state sent a pink slip to the saloons direct- 
ing their patrons for whom to vote in the primaries from the 
Governor down. 

3. The liquor vote was the largest mobile, controllable, bossible 
and corruptible vote which existed. Alcohol reduced multitudes 
to the position where their votes could be controlled. Then the 
liquor traffic organized the saloon vote, the ignorant vote, the 
foreign vote, and in some sections the negro vote, and delivered 
these controlled groups where it desired. The liquor vote was a 
vote which could be bossed. In any close political contest the 
wets had an advantage over the drys because they could plump 
their votes in a body while the more intelligent class of voters 
could not be controlled in this manner. Party association, prej- 
udices and other factors would enter in to prevent a solid union. 

The saloon vote was probably the most controllable, bossible, 
deliverable vote in the history of the country. Repeatedly it has 
been demonstrated that the labor vote is not deliverable as a 
unit. We do not have political cleavages along religious lines. 
Still less is there a class alignment. The farmers do not stand 
together. But the liquor vote was the one vote diffused through- 
out the country which could be shifted. This was due to the deg- 
radation of alcohol and the alcohol traffic. Furthermore, the 
liquor vote was elastic. The more votes needed, the more could be 
supplied. Corruption funds were available to purchase them if 
necessary. 

4. The liquor organizations through the years continuously 
urged their cohorts to engage actively in politics. Beer and 
politics were the two handles to their plow. The Sentinel, the 
liquor organ at Washington, for a long time kept at the head 
of its editorial page: 


It is the holy duty of every man who loves this country, wants its 
liberties and free institutions preserved and puritanical despotism 
destroyed, to see that all immigrants, or such that have neglected 
to do so heretofore, take out the necessary papers to become natu- 
ralized. . . . If we want to succeed we must do it at the baliot-box. 


Lining up the immigrants was but one of many phases of their 
political activities. Participation in politics came to be an es- 
sential part of the vocation of the liquor sellers. They were on 
the job all the year around. They were politically active all the 
time. With the reformers efforts were too often sporadic. Politt- 
cal preparations were put off until too short a time before the 


564 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


primaries or even until shortly before election. The liquor in- 
terests began early. They ran the primaries, the primaries ran 
the parties and the parties ran the government. 

The record of their political corruption would fill volumes; 
the colonization of voters, illegal registration, gross corruption of 
voters, repeating, intimidation of opponents, stuffing of ballot- 
boxes, falsification of the count—these and many other corrup- 
tions made liquor politics synonymous with rotten politics raised 
to the nth power. | 

5. The liquor interests had a constant incentive to continue in 
politics, The very nature of the traffic was such that organized 
society could not admit of free trade in liquor. Consequently 
from early days there were regulations seeking to restrict and 
restrain the evils. In Pennsylvania prior to 1890 there had 
been passed 382 different legislative acts relating to the liquor 
trafic. The multitudinous regulations, local, state and national, 
attempting to regulate or control the traffic served to keep it 
constantly in politics, whether prohibition was looming on the 
horizon or not. 

The license system granted a privilege, on the one hand, thus 
permitting the perpetuation of the traffic under the protection of 
the law, while on the other hand it attempted to hedge the traffic 
around with harassing restrictions which it was to the interest 
of the liquor sellers to violate. The constant endeavor to lessen 
those restrictions or to secure a lax enforcement or to secure 
immunity from prosecution kept the traffic continuously in 
politics. 

6. The complexity of our political system rendered the party 
machines inevitable.** They nominated the candidates and got 
out the vote. The officials elected were supposed to be representa- 
tive of their constituencies. Actually, an office-holder was the 
representative of the active or efficient part of his constituency, 
the part constituting the machine. Under ordinary circumstances 
he could not get far away from the organization which nominated 
him. Although in the later period the direct primary system was 
supposed to reform this situation, actually it achieved only partial 
success because under the direct nomination system, where a 
costly appeal to all the voters was necessary, the liquor vote con- 
tinued to be the chief group of controllable voters which could be 
directed where the political managers desired. Furthermore, the 
liquor traffic could provide the funds for primary expenses. It 
was reported of one of the most prominent advocates of the 

24 This is more fully described in Chapter XXIX, 


THE LIQUOR POWER 565 


direct primary system, one who was largely instrumental in se- 
curing its adoption in his state, that when needing funds for a 
primary campaign for United States Senator he accepted them 
from brewery interests and thereafter was subservient to the 
breweries. 

7. The liquor traffic wielded the balance of power which was 
made possible by the dual party system under which both in the 
nation and in many states and localities the two parties were com- 
paratively equal. 

It controlled the marginal, movable vote. If one party of- 
fended it the liquor traffic would throw its vote to the opposite 
party. 

So long as the masses of better class voters remained in their 
accustomed parties year after year, held there by hereditary 
influence, tradition, association, prejudice, bygone issues, or dis- 
tinctive party principles, which were often exaggerated, so long 
was it possible for a comparatively small, mobile, liquor-controlled 
vote to wield the balance of power and decide the elections. The 
Prohibitionists asserted that the citizens, otherwise good, who 
through blind partisanship were bound to their old parties were 
the ones who were largely responsible for liquor’s success in 
politics. Because these persisted in remaining divided between 
the two old parties, separated by vastly lesser issues, rum rule 
was made possible. 

The liquor traffic took advantage of the closeness of presi- 
dential elections and used, or threatened to use, its balance of 
power in pivotal states. 

So close were some of the presidential elections that in 1884, 
1888 and 1892 there were 16 states in each campaign where an 
average of less than three votes to a saloon moved from one major 
party to the opposite would have changed the electoral vote of 
those states. In 1916 there were eleven states, totaling 141 elec- 
toral votes, where there was a similar situation. It was a poor 
saloon which could not control at least ten or a dozen votes. In 
the period 1884 to 1916 there were 24 states in which, in two 
or more presidential elections, six votes to a saloon constituted 
more than a balance of power, In other words, during that 
period in at least two elections half of the states were very close 
states, close enough to permit six votes per saloon to change 
the result. A change of three votes per saloon from one major 
party to the opposite one was all that was necessary to decide 
between success and failure. | 

The first presidential election in which the liquor interests 


566 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


claimed the glory of success was in the defeat of Horace Greeley, 
a pronounced temperance man, in 1872. At that election a change 
of three votes per saloon in ten close states from Grant to Greeley 
would have given Greeley 188 electoral votes, and only 184 were 
necessary for election. If the liquor power was successful in 
turning three votes per saloon in each of these ten states from 
Greeley to Grant their claims appear to have been justified. 

In fact, in all but one or two of the ten states the turning of 
less than two votes per saloon of those who had been inclined to 
vote for Greeley to Grant would have provided the margin needed 
for success. Yet it is interesting to note that many of the his- 
tories tell us that Greeley was very badly defeated. 

In addition to presidential elections there were many state and 
local elections where the margin of plurality was small and where 
it was dangerous for the politicians to alienate the wet mobile 
vote. In Ohio in the eighties there were three changes of party 
in four gubernatorial elections and the liquor interests claimed 
they were responsible in each case. Evidently they were justified 
in their claims. 

In the field of economics the theory of margins holds a very 
prominent place. For example, the marginal utility of a com- 
modity is a well-known concept in relation to value. Likewise, 
in the field of politics the theory of margins has a place. The 
marginal vote, that is, the mobile uncertain vote on the margin 
of the party which is needed to insure the number required to 
obtain the plurality, is of superlative value. It is the sine qua non 
of the party managers whose preeminent objective is to win the 
election. With the great mass of citizens glued to their parties 
and the liquor vote mobile and procurable, the liquor vote be- 
came the much sought after marginal vote. 

This use of the balance of power, or the wielding of the mar- 
ginal vote, was compared to a teeter-board. The figure was that 
of a teeter-board with the Republican party at one end and the 
Democratic party at the other end with the liquor power in the 
center throwing its votes now to one end and now to the other, 
whichever way it could better promote its interests, 

Observing the success of the liquor side in wielding the bal- 
ance of power, there were some who advocated a similar method 
for the anti-liquor side. This was impracticable because it in- 
volved the control of a group of voters who were bossible and 
who would be subject to secret manipulation. It involved other 
objectionable methods unsuited to a moral reform. Finally, it 
was rule by a minority which could not permanently put into 


THE LIQUOR POWER 567 


operation a change in the policy of government which required 
both legislation and administration.” 

8. Where the liquor traffic was not able to wield the balance of 
power between the parties, owing to one party having a very 
large majority, and in those localities where the liquor element 
was greatly in the minority—even in these places it was able to 
wield an effective influence owing to its ability to deliver votes 
in groups. Frequently it was able to nominate its candidate by 
its strategy in encouraging several candidates to enter the pri- 
mary, getting the dry voters divided among two or more candi- 
dates and then plumping its cohesive group of votes for the one it 
wanted nominated. 

Where it was greatly in the minority it would often support the 
‘most respectable appearing candidate who would serve its pur- 
pose. Frequently it would support apparently good men, men 
whom the better elements would also support, but men to whose 
campaign fund they would contribute, or men who were subject 
to liquor influence and who, when the testing time would come, 
could be depended upon to be on the liquor side. 

9. A further factor underlying liquor’s power in politics 
was a partisan political alignment in which politics was so or- 
ganized and the parties were so composed that both of them 
sought to retain the liquor vote. Both feared to alienate the 
liquor power. Owing to the partisan prejudices and antipathies 
between the major parties, neither party could take a stand against 
the liquor traffic and by so doing expect to win all the anti-liquor 
voters of the opposite party. On the other hand, if one party 
offended the liquor vote that vote would leave almost unani- 
mously, with the consequent danger of party defeat. Although 
for many years there existed a strong anti-liquor element in each 
of the parties this element was not able to function effectively 
because divided between the two parties. 

With the liquor vote capable of being plumped practically as a 
unit and the anti-liquor vote divided, it was the liquor vote which 
was catered to by the politicians. 

The party manager required votes. He liked to get them in 
large numbers. If political conditions became too bad and he 
was threatened by a defection of a group of the better class 
voters he sought to offset the threatened Joss by the accession of 
another group. The saloons could furnish a large and elastic 
supply. Also, by long experience the politicians learned that the 


25 For a discussion of the states adopting prohibition in their relation to the 
balance of power, see infra, Chapter XXIII. 


568 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


liquor vote not only made threats to leave but did actually leave 
when there was action hostile to it. Consequently party man- 
agers, even those of the more respectable type, did not want to 
alienate that vote. It came therefore to be the general policy 
of party managers to conciliate the liquor vote. The liquor traffic 
was thus able to elicit the obedience of the parties. 

10. A final feature was the triple alliance which came to 
exist between the liquor power, the predatory interests and the 
corrupt politicians. This triple alliance has been termed, “The 
Modern Triumvirate.” 

As a consequence of some of the factors hereinbefore men- 
tioned, including the entry of the liquor traffic into politics on a 
large scale beginning in 1862; the incentive to control govern- 
ment, national, state and local; liquor’s ability to manipulate an ” 
alcohol-debased, saloon-frequenting voting force; and the ex- 
traordinary success which it achieved in dominating parties— 
these factors, together with (a) the resultant deterioration of 
politics and the election of low grade men to office who were 
subject to corruption or other subterranean influences and (b) 
the fact that certain moneyed interests also desired to control gov- 
ernment for their own purposes, led to an alliance between the 
liquor traffic and these selfish interests. These found that the 
liquor controlled officials of low moral and political standards 
could be utilized for their own base purposes. 

But the liquor traffic was the one interest which could control 
votes as well as furnish money. The other groups could pro- 
vide money for political purposes but they could not control. many 
votes. Consequently they were glad to make an alliance with 
the liquor traffic because it could provide the mobile and elastic 
vote to elect their tools to office. The liquor traffic was glad to 
join with the moneyed interests because they could furnish not 
only a part of the money for political purposes but they could 
furnish respectability, stability and influence which helped to en- 
trench the liquor traffic still further. Thus there came to be a 
working agreement between the liquor interests and certain of 
these other interests termed the predatory interests. These two 
groups supported the same kind of candidates and jointly exer- 
cised control over legislators and executive officials. 

On the other side there came to be a substantial community 
of interest between the liquor traffic and the politicians and politi- 
cal machines. These wanted votes above all things. Ordinarily 
the politicians did not need to worry about the great mass of 
voters. Most voters were stable, continuing in their accustomed 


THE LIQUOR POWER 569 


parties year after year, many of them held by what was almost 
a party fetish worship. The chief concern of the politician was 
the unstable, movable vote, the vote which lies on the mar- 
gin of plurality and decides which side wins. The liquor power 
frequently demonstrated that it could control the marginal vote, 
that its supply of votes was large and expandable and that its 
defection was perilous to the party which dared to alienate it. 

By the decade of the eighties so frequently had the liquor traf- 
fic disciplined and defeated candidates and parties that each 
major party feared to incur its enmity and sought to make peace 
by eschewing opposition and by allying the liquor vote as a de- 
sired and component and essential part of the party organization. 
This gave the liquor traffic a whip hand over the party and a 
negative on hostile legislation and administration. Public off- 
cials were rendered subservient. 

But the relationship between the liquor traffic and the political 
machines became even more than an alliance. In many sections, 
especially in the large cities, the liquor traffic controlled and 
manipulated the political machines. It obtained the strategic 
positions of power in the party organizations. For example, 
witness the men who were the political bosses. Not a few had 
been saloon-keepers or were financially interested in the liquor 
traffic and nearly all were politically rooted in liquor affiliations. 
Supported by its allies, the predatory interests, and including 
within its ranks the lawless, the grafters, the gamblers, the 
vicious, the fatteners on commercialized vice, and’ the criminal 
elements of the underworld, the liquor power came to be sub- 
stantially a co-proprietor of politics and government. This 
“Triumvirate” was furnishing to a very large degree the kind 
of government, particularly local government, under which the © 
American people lived through many years. 

This “Triumvirate” constituted a mighty enginery of political 
power which was battering at the foundations of popular gov- 
ernment. It was menacing our cherished institutions, subvert- 
ing civil liberty and endangering the perpetuity of the Republic. 

Governor Hooper of Tennessee pointed out certain aspects of 
liquor’s alliances in one of the least infested states when in 
accepting a renomination in 1912 he said: 


When I appeal to the people for a legislature free from saloon 
domination my appeal is not based alone upon grounds of temper- 
ance and morality. I want to say to the business men and taxpayers 
of this state that no valuable reform measure of any character can 
be secured at the hands of a legislature controlled by the whisky 


570 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


power. Why do I say this? Because the saloon lobby will always 
be found in alliance with every other corrupt and evil influence that 
infests the legislative halls. It cannot win alone. It wins in com- 
bination with other interests, political and financial, which have 
legislative axes to grind. It finances the combination and thus con- 
trols the component parts. This is not a fine-spun theory. It isa 
plain statement of a fact well known to every observer of politics 
and student of legislative history. A state and legislative ticket 
elected without the assistance of a whisky campaign fund will afford 
the people the greatest possible assurance of clean and progressive 
and reformatory legislation. 


EFFECTS UPON GOVERNMENT 


The liquor power, rendered still more puissant by its alliances, 
had far-reaching and most *maleficent effects upon government. 

1. It lowered the quality of American statesmanship. It all 
but eliminated from public life personalities of great moral power. 
Those who aspired to office were compelled to cater to it or at 
least refrain from offending it. The liquor power made cowards 
of public men. Again and again men classed as good men when 
they entered politics underwent a “strange and evil metamorpho- 
sis.”’ In fact, this class of men often went further to curry favor 
with the liquor element than bad men needed to. 

2. It deteriorated the ideals of young men. Ambitious young 
men with high purpose seeking to enter public life learned that 
they had to compromise with the liquor traffic or suffer defeat. 
On the other hand, in many cases those who cast their lot with 
the liquor power seemed to succeed in politics. It was a de- 
moralizing example to young men entering politics that those who 
served as attorneys for breweries found the path smoothed to 
high political position. 

3. It degraded politics until they were looked upon as a dirty 
pool instead of an exalted agency for the promotion of the public 
welfare. The liquor traffic was the source and center of bad 
government. Liquor politics and corrupt politics were synony- 
mous. 

4. It caused a deterioration of state legislatures and a distrust 
of representative government. This was evidenced by the pro- 
gressive limitation of the powers of state legislatures. Lengthen- 
ing state constitutions limited the scope of the powers of legis- 
latures on the one hand, and on the other increasing power was 
given to the people in the form of direct legislation such as the 


THE LIQUOR POWER 571 


initiative and referendum. Almost universally there was criti- 
cism, by publicists and writers on government, of the legislatures, 
the character of the membership and the quality of the legislative 
output.”° 

5. It brought the governments of cities almost universally into 
disrepute and thoughtful observers almost despaired of securing 
good municipal government. The type of officials and interests 
placed in power by the liquor triumvirate caused waste, graft 
and maladministration to permeate throughout the governments 
of many cities. Aside from the corruption of the police and 
the defiling of the lower courts one of the worst influences 
was in the tax departments. The liquor politicians commonly 
controlled the assessment of property and collection of taxes and 
the tax offices were honeycombed with gross favoritism to brew- 
ery and saloon interests and to those who contributed to the 
political machines. 

Hon. Frank 5S. Regan, former Prohibition member of the 
Illinois Legislature and well known tax expert, gathered an 
astounding array of facts and figures regarding the widespread 
dodging of their property taxes by the liquor interests. One 
multimillionaire brewer in St. Louis paid a tax on only $367. 
Some breweries were not assessed at all. Others were assessed 
but not required to pay. Honest citizens, of course, had to suffer 
for this in the increase of their tax burdens. 

6. It engendered disrespect for law and government. When 
officials owed their position to those who wanted the law disre- 
garded government was certain to be weak. Official connivance 
with lawbreakers tended to undermine all law. It tended to make 
people believe that the government could not enforce law, that 
lawlessness was to be condoned and that legislation was merely 
verbiage. : 

By augmenting disrespect for law the liquor power was striking 
at the fundamental basis of organized society. 

7, It blocked efforts for better government. It was the rock 
on which reforms were wrecked. It opposed woman suffrage, the 
initiative and referendum, the restriction of immigration and 
many other measures. Through its debauchery of citizens and 
its control of government, it was a bar to the progress of tne 
people. It was a menace to democracy.” 


26 Paul S. Reinsch, American Legislatures and Legislative Methods, Chapter 
VIII; Lynn Haines, The Minnesota Legislature of 1911, also The Minnesota 
Legislature of 1913. 

27 For liquor’s repeated blocking of the movement for woman suffrage, see 
Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, 


572 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


8. It was a large factor in stimulating changes in the form 
of government. When political evils became too appalling ef- 
forts were made to remedy those evils. Too often the remedy 
took the form of the advocacy of a change in the structure of 
government rather than reaching the roots of the malady, none 
of which was more fundamental than suppressing the traffic 
which was destroying the citizenship of the nation and cor- 
rupting the government. From the time when in the seventies a 
commission, which had been appointed to investigate and make 
recommendations regarding the betterment of municipal govern- 
ment, disappointed moral leaders by recommending changes 
merely in the structure of the government, it became the fashion 
through many years to try to solve the problem of better govern- 
ment by changes in the structure. So there began a system of 
constant changes and shifting from one form to another, from the 
bicameral system for city councils to a single chamber system, 
then to the mayor system, then to a combination, then to the com- 
mission form of government, then to the city manager plan and 
back and forth, often oscillating from one to the other. Like- 
wise in state and national government there were many remedies 
for bad government advocated, including civil service, the initia- 
tive, referendum and recall, direct election of United States 
Senators, direct primaries and so on. Some of these measures 
brought improvement but they were inadequate so long as alcohol 
debauched the electorate and the liquor power dominated political 
parties. 

9. It made government by the people almost a farce. With the 
liquor power dominating the machines of both parties, the situa- 
tion frequently occurred that all the choice the voters had, out- 
side the minor parties, was a choice between two candidates both 
of whom were controlled by the liquor power. The people were 
compelled to live under a government practically run by the gin 
mills. The exalted right of suffrage lost its potency under such 
conditions. The small choice between the two liquor dominated 
parties was one of the main reasons why many thought it hardly 
worth while to go to the polls. 

10. Liquor’s political power did not cease with the placing of 
prohibition in the Constitution of the United States. This was 
due on the one side to liquor’s persistent, organized resistance to 
the law of the Constitution, and on the other side it was due to 
the method by which prohibition was adopted. 

Under the omni-partisan method political effort was directed 
almost exclusively to electing particular individual candidates, 


THE LIQUOR POWER 573 


chiefly in local districts, without regard to party. The outstand- 
ing fact of party government was practically ignored. Further- 
more, many of the leaders in the advocacy of this method little 
appreciated the degree to which the liquor power was entrenched 
in the bi-party system. Their vision had for many years been 
so limited by their local option efforts that they never fully 
comprehended the magnitude of the liquor power and did not 
have an adequate realization of the importance of disentrench- 
ing the liquor power from its long established position in politics. 
Consequently there was no adequate attempt to disentrench it. 
There was no serious attempt to reform our national politics 
so as to eliminate liquor’s influence. As the result of this method, 
which was the prevailing one in the adoption of constitutional 
prohibition, no effort was made to place in power a party which 
was committed to prohibition. There was no party championship 
of prohibition by the major parties. The powers of government 
were not adequately marshaled to overcome the liquor power. 

Meanwhile the old party alignments continued as before. The 
preexisting composition of parties, comprising diverse elements 
on this question, remained unchanged. The old alliances were 
but little disturbed. The control of politics was left largely 
in the hands of the same politicians who had been long associated 
with the old type of despicable liquor politics. Many officials 
who had held office as beneficiaries of the old liquor power con- 
tinued in office. Party purpose and party incentive were not 
vitally modified. Each party sought to retain its wet constit- 
uency. There was almost no reform in the national administra- 
tion. The carrying into effect of a great moral principle was 
entrusted to the hands of an old political system which had 
undergone no regeneration. 

In nearly all parts of the country during the six years since the 
Eighteenth Amendment went into effect there has continued a 
complaint of bad politics, a complaint of political duplicity, of 
the Jack of moral principle in politics. The great reform was 
only fractionally accomplished. The liquor traffic was outlawed 
but liquor politics remained. The greater task ahead is to drive 
the liquor power from its entrenchments in politics as well as 
from its entrenchments in law. 

In 1926 the Prohibitionists proclaim the need of a political 
union of patriotic citizens to achieve the greater objective. They 
proclaim the need of a party of commanding principle with a high 
moral purpose. Six years of omni-partisan constitutional prohibi- 
tion under three Presidents have demonstrated the need and the 


574 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


wisdom of the program of the Prohibition party which sought 
and still seeks not merely a change in the law but a reorganization 
of our politics, a veritable political revolution to overthrow the 
liquor power and establish an administration of government which 
will make prohibition regnant and effective. 

No other group had so comprehensive a grasp of the magnitude 
of the problem or presented such a statesmanlike program as did 
the leaders of the Prohibition party. 


Chapter XXVIII 
THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 


Although the principle of prohibition is now a part of the 
Constitution of the United States it is still widely misunderstood 
and continues to be the subject of attack by a misleading and 
mendacious propaganda, 

The purpose of this chapter is to summarize in broad outline 
some of the grounds for national prohibition as they existed 
just prior to the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment. The 
same reasons apply in the main in any nation. 

This study involves a consideration of the nature and conse- 
quences of the alcoholic liquor traffic, the sphere of the State, the 
question of personal liberty, the reason why prohibition should be 
national, why it deserves a place in the national Constitution and 
why it should include all alcoholic liquors, including beer and 
wine. A few glimpses of the economic benefits of prohibition 
are interspersed. 

The principle of prohibition is based upon the nature of alcohol 
and its consequences to society as a whole. 

Alcohol, in whatever beverage consumed, is a narcotic poison, 
habit-forming in character, possessing such peculiar qualities and 
producing such exceptionally deleterious effects that it belongs 
in a class almost by itself so far as the attitude of government 
toward it is concerned. The courts repeatedly have called atten- 
tion to its exceptional characteristics. Said the Supreme Court of 
South Carolina: 


Liquor, in its nature, is dangerous to the morals, good order, 
health and safety of the people, and is not to be placed upon the 
same footing with the ordinary commodities of life such as corn, 
wheat, cotton and potatoes.’ 


The evils resulting from the legally protected liquor traffic are 
of such colossal magnitude, so widespread, so pervasive, so in- 
herent in the very nature of alcohol, and particularly they affect 
society as a whole to such a degree, that the only proper attitude 
for organized society, or the State, toward that traffic is that 


1 State v. Aiken, 42 S.C. 422. 
575 


576 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of opposition or prohibition rather than that of license or pro- 
tection. 

The fundamental reason for prohibition is because the liquor 
traffic has such prodigiously bad effects upon society. The evil 
consequences resulting from the liquor traffic are by no means 
confined to the individual who traffics or to the one who drinks, 
but they affect the family, the community, the state, the nation 
and the race. | 

Furthermore the evils are by no means infrequent or merely 
occasional or casual. They are not remediable by regulation or 
by any system which involves the perpetuation of the traffic. But 
the evils are so frequent, so common, so inherent in the very 
nature of alcohol and are such inseparable concomitants of the 
liquor traffic that the only adequate means of suppressing those 
evils is to prohibit the traffic. 

It makes little difference how or where the alcoholic liquor 
is sold, whether in a high license saloon or a low groggery, 
whether under a government monopoly or by a_bootlegger, 
whether in a department store or through the mail order sys- 
tem. ‘The consequences are largely the same however the liquor 
is distributed. The only adequate remedy is to stop the source 
of the supply and suppress the traffic in beverage alcohol. 

The consequences of the perpetuation of the liquor traffic are 
so numerous, so far-reaching and so appalling that only an outline 
of some of them can be given here. They include the physical, 
economic, social, educational, political and moral aspects, all of 
which are herein considered with reference to their relation to 
the purposes of government. 

1. Physical. A. One aspect of alcohol is that it has an espe- 
cial and direct effect upon that part of man’s physical organiza- 
tion upon which his mental and moral nature depends. Alcohol 
has an especial affinity for the brain, the seat of the intellect, 
judgment, reason, will and conscience of man, all of which at- 
tributes are essential in a popular government. Alcohol attacks 
this highest organ of man, the one which directly involves his 
capacity as a political being. 

In a nation whose government rests upon universal suffrage 
anything which injures the seat of the intellect, judgment, rea- 
son, will and conscience of man affects the quality of the govern- 
ment. 

The foundation of popular government is the responsible in- 
telligence of the citizens. The widespread traffic in a commodity 
which affects the brains of men, such as alcohol is recognized 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 577 


to do, strikes at the very foundation of government of the people, 
by the people and for the people. 

The poisoning and the perversion of the brains of citizens is 
not merely a private affair of the individual. It is a matter 
which concerns the State. The right of a State to prohibit a traffic 
which, by deranging the brain, revolutionizes and debases the 
conduct and character of citizens and disrupts civil relations is 
the right of self-protection, the right to prevent the undermining 
of the most essential foundations of the State. 

B, Another aspect in which the very right of self-preserva- 
tion requires society to prohibit this traffic is due to the direct 
hereditary effect of alcohol in impairing the succeeding genera- 
tion. Alcohol is a protoplasmic poison which is now recognized 
to have a direct effect in undermining the vitality of the human 
embryo and blighting children before they are born. Of all the 
consequences of alcohol the most terrifying are its effects in 
causing the degeneration of the race. Alcohol has been an out- 
standing factor in the decadence of the nations of the past. The 
large scale liquor production of modern times together with the 
marvelous increase in the facilities for transportation and the 
worldwide promotion of liquor sales by the heavily capitalized 
liquor industry have made the alcohol problem in the modern 
world more alarming than ever before. These factors together 
with the impaired heredity of the race and humanity’s suscepti- 
bility and predisposition to alcohol all tend to make the threat of 
race degeneracy most portentous unless the traffic is prohibited. 

No object should engage the attention of the statesmen of any 
land ahead of preserving the people against degeneration. 

Conservation of the public health has come to be recognized 
as one of the fundamental functions of government. Alcohol 
vitiates human stock. “The liquor traffic is the enemy of the 
human race by giving us humanity under enfeebled, diseased and 
depraved conditions.” ? 

C. Alcohol’s direct effect in impairing the physical capacity 
and efficiency of the nation was brought strikingly into promi- 
nence in the World War. It diminished the man power of the 
nation. It unfitted many men for military service and lessened 
the efficiency of multitudes of others. It decreased the produc- 
tivity of those who were furnishing supplies. If it is essential 
that a nation be strong for war it is just as essential that it have 
an abounding strength for the constructive tasks of peace. 

2. Economic. It is now almost universally a function of 

2 Robert C. Pitman, Alcohol and the State, p. 78. 


578 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


government to promote the economic welfare of the nation. 
Among the economic burdens of the liquor traffic were: 

A. The colossal waste of the drink bill, the expenditure for 
which brought no valuable return. On the contrary it brought 
immeasurable injury. 

B. The indirect costs imposed upon society in the care and 
support of those rendered dependent, defective or delinquent as 
a result of the traffic. 

C. The great diminution in the productive capacity of indus- 
try. Individual and social income is dependent upon productivity. 
Distribution is a much discussed question in economics but pro- 
ductivity is a more fundamental one for if wealth is not produced 
it cannot be distributed. 

Dr. Irving Fisher, Professor of Political Economy at Yale 
University, stated in 1919 that by enforcing prohibition we would 
increase the economic productivity of this nation from ten to 
twenty per cent and would add to the national output from 
seven and one-half to fifteen billion dollars worth of product every 
year. 

Prohibition, even under very imperfect governmental enforce- 
ment, has brought about a marvelous increase in productivity. 
In March, 1925, Mr. Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, 
declared that prohibition had proven its case from the stand- 
point of increased efficiency in production. 

D. One effect of the licensed liquor traffic was to hold down 
wages. 

Among the factors affecting wages are (1) the productivity of 
labor, (2) the supply of labor, (3) the demand for labor, (4) 
the standard of living, and (5) the strength of the labor organi- 
zations. 

All of these factors alcohol affected adversely. 

(1) It lessened the productivity of industry due to its im- 
pairment of the skill, efficiency and dependability of labor, due 
to the loss of time by reason of drink, and due to the ineffective 
utilization of expensive machinery. 

(2) It increased the supply of cheap, unskilled labor by throw- 
ing onto the labor market not only those deteriorated by alcohol 
but also the cheaper labor of women and children forced into 
industry by the failure of a drinking head of the family to pro- 
vide. 

(3) It lessened the demand for labor by reason of such a large 
share of the expenditures of the people being diverted to the liquor 
traffic which employed only a small amount of labor in the manu- 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 579 


facture of liquor, and likewise required only a comparatively 
small amount of raw materials with a correspondingly small 
amount of labor to produce those raw materials. 

So characteristic of the liquor industry were these features 
of employing only a small amount of labor and using only a 
small amount of raw materials that it was called a parasitic 
industry because it was a parasite, thriving at the expense of the 
legitimate industries, 

(4) Alcohol lowered the standard of living. It blunted the 
higher sensibilities, coarsened the tastes, caused indifference to 
‘surroundings, destroyed ambition and at the same time wasted 
the money by which a higher standard might have been main- 
tained. 

(5) One element in successful struggles of organized labor for 
better wages is the support of public opinion. More than once 
such struggles were lost because public support was alienated by 
reason of too close affiliation with the liquor traffic and because 
of liquor-caused violence in connection with strikes. 

It is to be noted that in several of these respects the influence 
of the liquor traffic affected not only the wages of the men who 
drank but those of the sober workingmen as well. The sober 
workingmen had to suffer when the productivity of the shop, or 
producing unit, was lowered because of drinking men not being 
at their posts. Large classes of labor had to suffer from the 
competition of cheap labor and especially labor as a whole had 
to suffer from the diminished demand for’the products of labor 
due to the diversion of the colossal national drink bill from being 
expended for legitimate industries, which employed a large num- 
ber, to a parasite industry which employed only a few. Labor 
as a class also had to suffer because of liquor’s injury to the 
cause of organized labor and because of its coarsening of tastes 
and lowering the standard of living. 

Prohibition by turning the expenditures of the masses of the 
people from liquor into the channels of legitimate trade caused 
an increased demand for labor and a remarkable stimulus to in- 
dustry. Despite the fact that in the early years of prohibition 
following the World War the world market for American prod- 
ucts was greatly curtailed due to the financial exhaustion and 
depression of the European countries following the War— 
despite this worldwide economic depression America enjoyed a 
prosperity such as she had never known. 

Prohibition enhanced the productivity of labor, caused an in- 
crease in wages and raised the standard of living. The ap- 


580 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


proximate removal of alcohol from the great masses of the 
working people removed a narcotizing, stupefying agent which 
had been blanketing them. It unclouded the brains of men, 
widened their outlook, gave a stimulus to ambition, removed bar- 
riers to initiative and invention, and opened the way to a greater 
content to life. Large numbers of the people were able to enjoy 
greater aggregates of the better things of life. Probably no other 
governmental measure has done more to promote the pursuit of 
happiness, one of the objects for which governments were insti- 
tuted among men. Said Judge Gary, the head of the United 
States Steel Corporation, speaking of the employees of that cor- 
poration, over 300,000 in number: “The improved condition 
among these people is one of the most remarkable chapters ever 
written in the history of civilization and it is attributable to 
prohibition.” 

3. Social. The liquor traffic surrounded the masses of the 
people with a social environment whereby it was inevitable that 
vast numbers would acquire the alcoholic appetite. The saloon 
and drinking customs were a part of the current social order 
under which multitudes were swept into the alcoholic vortex, a 
large proportion of them before they had attained the age of 
mature judgment. 

In our modern industrial civilization characterized by the 
congregation of masses of population in great cities, by extreme 
division of labor and limited hours, the governmental policy of 
perpetuating the liquor traffic had profound effects. The liquor 
trathe exploited the workingman, dominated his unoccupied time 
and absorbed his earnings, all at the expense of productivity and 
economic and moral welfare. Alcohol’s injury to capacity and 
its waste of earnings had far-reaching consequences in wiping out 
the margin which determined whether there should be a normal 
standard of living with efficiency, productivity and good citizen- 
ship or whether there should be inefficiency, dependency, de- 
graded citizenship and the undermining of the social structure 
of the nation. 

Alcohol impaired the will to save and engendered improvidence. 
It kept large numbers on the verge of dependence or below it. 
It vastly increased the ranks of the propertyless masses, that class 
whom the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 
feared would some day endanger the perpetuity of the Republic. 

Here again prohibition, although imperfectly enforced by the 
officials and producing results chiefly through its own inherent 
soundness and righteousness, has had remarkable effects. It 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 581 


has promoted thrift, providence and forethought. It has added 
tremendously to the savings of the common people, has greatly 
increased independence and self-confidence and diminished the 
number of the propertyless masses. 

These effects, helping to make possible, as they have, the 
establishment of labor banks and big business enterprises by the 
labor organizations and the purchase on a wide scale of the 
securities of corporations by the employees thereof, mark the be- 
ginning of a new social and economic era in which there shall be 
a greater equality in capacity, a juster distribution of wealth and 
a more widespread possession of the world’s goods. As never 
before since the science of economics began, the wage earner is 
supplying capital on a large scale for the expansion of industry 
and the progress of the world. Prohibition has helped to usher 
in a more ideal economic society. 

In the pre-prohibition days the liquor traffic increased the 
difficulties of and intensified every social problem. 

It complicated the city problems. Liquor was everywhere not 
only accessible but obtrusive. .It exploited the ignorant and the 
foreigner. It bred the slum. It environed city masses with drink- 
ing customs, mores, and social pressures so that alcoholic habits 
were formed and multitudes of the people were degenerated. It 
made of municipal government a perennial stench. 

The housing problem, the immigration problem, the race prob- 
lem, the crime problem and many other problems seemed almost 
insoluble under the pall spread over society by alcohol. All of 
them are being rendered less difficult under prohibition. Even 
the narcotic drug problem which the opponents of prohibition 
claimed would be greatly intensified and made much worse under 
prohibition because, they asserted, the people would be driven to 
the use of drugs, has become much less serious under prohibi- 
tion. 

In March, 1925, as a result of surveys made by the United 
States Public Health Service and the Division of Narcotics of 
the government it was estimated that the entire number of drug 
addicts was between 110,000 and 150,000. In 1900 it had been 
estimated that the number of addicts was 264,000. The fact 
that, with the possible exception of a very few localities, there 
had not been an increase in drug addiction under prohibition was 
brought out in a nation-wide investigation made by the American 
Medical Association. 

4. Educational consequences. The liquor inheritance affected 
the mentality of large numbers of children. This was an injury 


582 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


which time alone can heal. More than one generation and _pos- 
sibly several will be required to recover from the appalling injury 
to the brains and nerves of the nation. 

The drain of the drink bill forced multitudes of children and 
young people into industry without the education and prepara- 
tion which were needed to enable them to obtain high position or 
to become first-class citizens. It overfilled the ranks of the 
unskilled. 

The liquor traffic was handicapping the youth of the nation 
through the hereditary taint of alcohol, the blight of an un- 
protected childhood, the contaminating effects of a saloon environ- 
ment, the shortened period of education due to the necessity of 
helping support the family because the father drank, and the en- 
ticing accessibility of drink. These and a whole chain of liquor 
influences, hereditary, environmental, economic, social, educa- 
tional and moral, all were tending to make successive generations 
more unfit. 

In these respects prohibition has caused a right about face. 
In traveling over the United States and visiting hundreds of 
cities nothing is more encouraging than to observe the marvelous 
increase in attendance in high schools, colleges and universities. 
In city after city the high schools are filled to overflowing and 
new and larger buildings are required. Likewise practically every 
higher institution of learning is filled to capacity and additional 
resources are being sought to care for the increasing number of 
young people who are knocking at their doors. 

Another aspect was the educational effect of the presence 
of the licensed saloon and the fact that in the eyes of the law it 
was as legal a business as any other. Although for years every 
state had provided for the teaching in the public schools of the 
effects of alcohol the presence of the traffic in current life and the 
facilities to drink counteracted the teachings of the schools to a 
large degree. It was difficult to make progress in temperance 
teachings with the license laws continuously exerting an influence 
directly contrary to those teachings. Taking the country as a 
whole, progress in temperance was not being made but rather there 
was an alarming retrogression as evidenced by the increasing 
per capita consumption. The educational effect of bad laws was 
having a greater effect than the teachings of the schools. 

Law is to a large degree an educator. Its sanctions or its 
prohibitions are influential with large numbers. Prohibition 
educates toward abstinence. A prohibition law poorly enforced 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 583 


nurtures anti-liquor sentiment better than a perpetuationist law 
enforced. 

s. The political effects. These are discussed in the chapter on 
The Liquor Power. In this respect the effects upon govern- 
ment were direct and most perilous. The liquor traffic threatened 
the life of the government by debauching and degrading the units 
of citizenship. It was continuously, persistently and perniciously 
active in promoting its own despicable objectives. It made al- 
liances with other interests in opposition to the public welfare 
which resulted in the corruption of politics and the perversion 
of government. It took advantage of the complexities of our 
governmental system, the separation of powers and divisions of 
authority to place its henchmen in strategic positions to block 
all efforts seeking to restrain it. 

It used its power over the liquor controlled vote to intimidate 
political parties and dominate politics and government. 

It commonly controlled the nominations of both parties leav- 
ing good citizens little choice in the exercise of the suffrage. 
Wendell Phillips once said: ‘Universal suffrage is a sham while 
rum rules our great cities.” 

6. The moral consequences. These were so appalling as to 
have been apparent to every one. The liquor traffic was described 
as “the most pervasive moral wrong within the circle of Christian 
civilization.” It caused an atrophy of the moral fiber due, first, 
to the effect of alcohol on the reason, judgment, will and con- 
science, the higher attributes of man, and, second, due to the 
moral atmosphere resulting from the presence of the saloon with 
its brain perverted habitués and its monopolization of the un- 
occupied time of great masses of men. It was a most formidable 
obstacle to the work of the church at home and the influence of 
the missionaries abroad. 

In order that the oncoming generation, those who know not the 
legalized liquor traffic, may not consider conditions under the 
Eighteenth Amendment, even where most poorly enforced, com- 
parable with conditions as they used to be under license, let them 
read the following summary from the New York Tribune of 
March 2, 1884, not a temperance or prohibition paper but a 
leading metropolitan daily: 


It is impossible to examine any subject connected with the prog- 
ress, the civilization, the physical well-being, the religious condition 
of the masses without encountering this monstrous evil. It is the 
center of all social and political mischief. It paralyzes beneficent . 


584 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


energies in every direction. It neutralizes educational agencies. It 
silences the voice of religion. It baffles penal reform. It obstructs 
political reform. It rears aloft a mass of evilly inspired power 
which at every salient point threatens social and national advance ; 
which gives to ignorance and vice a greater potency than intelligence 
and virtue can command ; which deprives the poor of the advantages 
of modern progress; which debauches and degrades millions, 
brutalizing and soddening them below the plane of healthy savagery. 


The consequences above enumerated thus vitally affect prac- 
tically every interest of society. 

Whatever analysis of the ends of society, or of the State, we 
make, whatever tests of social welfare we employ, the conclusion 
leads to prohibition. Whether we use the analysis and nomencla- 
ture of the sociologists who tell us that the purposes of society, 
the ends which it is the duty of society to promote, are: health, 
wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, rightness and religion ; 
or whether we use the terms of the legal writers who say it is the 
duty of government to protect the public health, the public safety, 
the public order and the public morals; in either case testing the 
consequences of the liquor traffic with relation to the content of 
social welfare, or the objectives of organized society, or the duty 
of government, we reach the inevitable conclusion that the re- 
sources of organized society, that is, of the State, should be 
marshaled to suppress a traffic causing the consequences the liquor 
traffic caused. 


THE SPHERE OF /THE STATE 


The sphere of the State has been an interesting subject for 
the speculations of political philosophers from Plato and Aristotle 
down. Fortunately the principle of prohibition can be based upon 
those principles upon which philosophers of nearly all schools 
are agreed. Nearly all agree that, at the minimum, it is the 
function of the government as the agent of the State to protect 
life and property. In its first Address to the People, published 
herein * issued by the Prohibition party in 1869, which was writ- 
ten by Gerrit Smith, who twice had been the nominee of the 
radical Abolitionists for President, the ground of prohibition was 
that it is the duty of government to protect life and property. 
On this ground alone there is abundant justification for prohibi- 
tion. 

Current political philosophy, however, attaches a wider inter- 

3 See infra, Chapter IV. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 585 


pretation to the meaning of life and property than formerly, so 
the scope of the authority of the State is generally regarded, even 
by those who in theory limit its functions to the protection of 
life and property, as of wide latitude.* Besides, there are other 
theories which go much further than the protection of life and 
property and emphasize the duty of the State, or of government 
acting in its behalf, to promote the public welfare. 

In America the discussion of the object of government has 
frequently centered around the statement in the Declaration of 
Independence that governments are instituted among men to 
secure the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 
Coupled with this has been the Preamble to the Constitution 
which includes the establishment of justice, the promotion of 
the general welfare and the securing of the blessings of liberty 
to ourselves and our posterity. 

Similarly, the Bill of Rights of Great Britain declared: ‘“‘Gov- 
ernment is constituted for the protection, safety, prosperity and 
happiness of the people, and not for the profit or private interests 
of any one man, family or class of men.” 

The object of government, then, has to do with life, liberty, 
happiness, property, protection, safety and the prosperity of the 
people, together with justice and the promotion of the general 
welfare. 

Furthermore, from the time of Aristotle down the concept of 
the State has included idealistic characteristics and purposes. 
Aristotle, whose The Politics still has surpassing weight among 
scholars and political philosophers, said: ‘The State has for its 
end living well—living happily and nobly; it is an association not 
for mere life but for noble actions.’’ He said that the State is a 
means to the moral development of man—in other words, for the 
promotion of moral welfare. He assigned sovereign power to 
the mass of the people because “the aggregate virtue of the 
whole people exceeds that of any particular part.” This is very 
close to a recognition of the moral personality of the State.® 

The conception of the State held by a number of Christian 
writers is that it is an institution ordained by the Almighty. 

It requires no argument to demonstrate to a thinking person 
that the prohibition of the liquor traffic is decidedly in harmony 
with all of the objects of government mentioned above. The 
consequences hereinbefore enumerated indicate that the liquor 


4 Dealey, The State and Government (1921), p. 55. 
5 Dunning, Political Theories, Vol. I, p. 68 


586 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


traffic contravenes nearly every object of government and is in 
direct opposition to the fundamental purposes of the State. 

It destroys life and property, robs citizens of both civil and 
individual liberty, supplants happiness with misery, makes pro- 
tection and safety a mockery, blights prosperity, prevents the 
establishment of justice and is inimical to the general welfare. 


PERSONAL LIBERTY 


Upon only one of these objects of government has there been 
any serious debate, that one is regarding the concept of liberty. 

The liberty referred to in the Declaration of Independence and 
the Preamble to the Constitution was civil liberty. 

But the supporters of the liquor traffic have insisted upon what 
they call ‘personal liberty,’ which is practically the freedom of 
the individual to do what he pleases with respect to liquor no 
matter how seriously the consequences may affect others. 

The highest courts, both the United States Supreme Court and 
the supreme courts of the various states, have repeatedly denied 
the claim to such personal liberty. Some of the decisions have 
been quoted in Chapter XXVI. Note especially the case of 
Crowley v. Christensen, 137 U. S. 86.° 

The view or the judgment of the United States Supreme Court 
upon the subject of liberty is further illustrated by an extract 
from the decision in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 


Weree ri: 


The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to 
every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute 
right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, 
wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which 
every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any 
other basis organized society could not exist with safety to its 
members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto 
himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy. Real 
liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle 
which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his 
own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless 
of the injury which may be done to others. This Court has more 
than once recognized it as a fundamental principle that persons and 
property are subjected to all kinds of restraints and burdens in 
order to secure the general comfort, health and prosperity of the 
State. 

6 Infra, Chapter XXVI, p. 521. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 587 


The Ohio Supreme Court said: 


Liberty, as understood in this country, is not license, but liberty 
regulated by law. The personal liberty of every man is subject to 
such reasonable regulations as, in the wisdom of the legislature, are 
regarded as necessary to promote, not only the peace and good order 
of society, but its well-being.’ 


Liberty does not mean license, but it means the enjoyment 
of the largest freedom consistent with the equal enjoyment of 
freedom by others. If one man’s insistence upon liberty produces 
injury to some one else there is where liberty stops. Unrestrained 
personal liberty may be possible to a Robinson Crusoe but in a 
complex, modern society the experience of centuries has demon- 
strated that true liberty is that liberty which is subject to law. 
The race has learned that a much higher degree of freedom 
and social happiness is obtained under the protection of organized 
society than under an absence of law. 

License to do as one pleases leads to lawlessness, to anarchy 
and to the claw and fang of the jungle. 

Prohibition is not directed primarily toward the individual but 
is directed toward the traffic, the manufacture and the sale. 
Trade is a social act and for centuries it has been recognized 
that government has a right to restrict or prohibit trades inimical 
to the common good. Blackstone said: ‘““Common law declares 
that no man has a right to use his property to the injury of 
another and the consent of the party injured is no mitigation 
of the offence.” 

The individual may claim the right to eat and drink what he 
pleases. Theoretically he may eat diseased meat or anything 
else and, provided he is able to prove it does not injure any one 
else, he has that liberty. However, even here, it may be noted in 
passing, there is a distinction between diseased meat and alcohol 
because the latter, being habit forming and brain perverting, 
affects the brain and may injure a citizen in his political capacity. 
It may also produce a hereditary effect. Although a man may 
himself eat diseased meat, if he tries to sell it that is a different 
matter. The selling is a social act. It is therefore made an of- 
fense against the law to sell it. 

But assuming, for the sake of the argument, that a man has 
a right to eat or drink what he pleases, he has no right to require 
for his own convenience and supply the maintenance of a traffic 
or system the effects of which are deleterious to the interests of 
society. Prohibition is directed towards the traffic, the liquor sys- 

7 State v. Powell, 58 Ohio 344. 


588 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


tem. It does not concern itself with individual drinking. It is 
not a sumptuary law. 

When organized society, or the State, through its duly con- 
stituted organs determines upon a certain policy of government 
in harmony with the purposes of the State and the welfare of 
society; when, for example, it determines upon the policy of the 
prohibition of the liquor traffic, such a policy should prevail 
notwithstanding the personal desires of a minority group. The 
welfare of society is the supreme consideration. Personal desires 
of certain individuals should be subordinated. Otherwise the 
road lies towards anarchy. 

The basis of prohibition being the injurious effects of the 
liquor traffic upon the objects of the State, the moderate drinker’s 
personal liberty must yield to the superior right of the State to 
protect its interests. 

This interference with so-called personal liberty is no different 
from what government does in relation to scores of activities, 
many of which involve no moral obliquity of themselves. For 
example, government prohibits the building of frame buildings 
within the fire limits of cities. It prohibits the fast driving of 
automobiles in populous centers. It restrains going in and out 
of a quarantined house. None of these acts are inherently wrong. 
They are based upon the welfare of society. 

The effort to inject a theological discussion, whether drinking 
liquor is a sin or not, is entirely irrelevant and has no connection 
with the principle of prohibition. The question of what is sinful 
is not involved. Many acts are unlawful under civil law which 
are not sinful and, on the other hand, some acts regarded as sins 
are not unlawful. 

The legal prohibition of an act is solely on the ground of its 
evil effects upon society, and not at all on the ground of the 
inherent evil of the act itself. Prohibition is based on the conse- 
quences of the liquor traffic as a whole upon society. 

The admission, for the sake of the argument, that drinking a 
glass of beer occasionally does not cause appreciable injury would 
not affect the soundness of the principle of prohibition because 
there is no doubt that the general consequences of the traffic in 
beer are to a high degree injurious and those consequences are 
inseparable from the very nature of beer. 

If, for the sake of society, the stoppage of those serious in- 
juries involves the individual, who seemingly is not appreciably 
injured, surrendering his beer, such surrender is only similar 

8 E. J. Wheeler, Prohibition, the Principle, the Policy and the Party, p. 36. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 589 


to that involved in many other laws enacted for the welfare of 
society. The welfare of the people is the supreme consideration. 

Finally, in this discussion of liberty attention might be called 
to the large number who were deprived of liberty completely by 
being imprisoned as a result of crime caused by drink and to 
those who were slaves to alcohol. Prohibition will liberate many 
of these, or at least prevent the oncoming generation from be- 
coming enslaved. 

Prohibition means a larger liberty because it means the estab- 
lishment of better conditions of living for the masses. 

Prohibition is bringing a new freedom for the oncoming gen- 
erations, a freedom, ultimately, from the taint of an alcoholic 
inheritance: a freedom for the women and children from the 
misery of a drunkard’s home; a freedom from the handicap of 
an arrested education; a freedom from the enticements of the 
ubiquitous, legally protected saloon; a freedom from the dangers 
and injuries of liquor-caused accidents; a freedom from the waste 
and losses due to misdirected expenditures for liquor and— 
although not yet achieved it is next on the calendar—a freedom 
from the execrable politics of a liquor-dominated political system. 

Two other points regarding the theory of prohibition should 
be mentioned. 

The purpose of prohibition is not primarily to make men 
moral by law but to establish the social conditions of morality 
under which men are more likely to be moral than when living 
under an environment which is conducive to immorality and 
wrong-doing. Gladstone said it was “the duty of government to 
make it easy to do right and difficult to do wrong.” Prohibition 
establishes the right standard for government and provides sur- 
roundings wherein it is more likely that men will do right. 
Cardinal Newman said: “Virtue must come from within; to 
this problem religion and morality must direct themselves. But 
vice may come from without; to hinder this is the care of the 
statesman.” 

The final point is a suggestion of the far-reaching influence of 
law and government. I*ew people have any adequate apprecia- 
tion of the degree to which governmental policy affects and 
molds the lives and characters of the citizens. If through unwise 
governmental policies a nation may be drawn into war and mil- 
lions of lives of its citizens are required in sacrifice, and if through 
a bad governmental policy the liquor traffic is permitted to destroy 
not only the lives but the souls of millions, how extremely vital 
it is that we should strive for righteous policies in government. 


590 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Some cynics and thoughtless people may seek to ridicule the idea 
of making men moral by law but the fact is that the social and 
ethical gains through governmental action during the past cen- 
tury have been beyond computation.° 


WHY NATIONAL PROHIBITION 


Among the reasons for nation-wide prohibition were: 

1, The liquor traffic was a nation-wide evil. Its consequences 
were substantially uniform wherever or however the liquor was 
sold. The evil is largely inherent in the nature of alcohol. It is 
a subject on which a uniform national policy should apply. 

2. The burdens of the liquor traffic could not be confined to 
the state or locality where initiated. The criminal developed in 
the slums of the great city went all over the country to commit 
his criminal acts. Young men who went from no-license com- 
munities to a large city in a license state to seek education or 
fortune often became victims of alcohol. The burden in the 
care of paupers, criminals and the insane was not confined to the 
states where the liquor was sold. 

3. The liquor problem concerned the nation as a whole. Lin- 
coln, in discussing the relation between national power and states 
rights, enunciated a guiding principle when he said: ‘Whatever 
concerns the whole should be confided to the whole—to the gen- 
eral government; while whatever concerns only the state should 
be left exclusively to the state.” 2° 

The liquor problem affected such fundamental national interests 
as (a) the man power of the nation, (b) the vitality of the na- 
tion, (c) the productivity of American industry, (d) the quality 
and integrity of our government, and (e) the moral stamina of 
the citizens. 

Whether the perpetuity and supremacy of a nation depends 
upon the efficiency of its man power, upon its economic productiv- 
ity, upon the quality of its public officers or upon the excellence 
of its moral standards—in any case the effect of the liquor traffic 
is of very vital national concern as it affects all of these basic 
elements. 

4. The liquor question was a national one because the liquor 
traffic was entrenched in the national revenues. In 1913 the 
Russian consul-general in London, writing to the World Prohibi- 


® For the legal basis of prohibition and for the attitude of the United States 
Supreme Court towards personal liberty and confiscation, see infra, Chapter XXVI. 
10 Message to Congress, July 2, 1861. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 591 


tion Federation, made a most significant statement when he said: 
“The crux of the question is that the governments of civilized 
States are nearly all interested in the sale of alcohol.”’ 

In 1914 more than one-third of the total ordinary receipts of 
the federal government came from the liquor traffic. Accord- 
ing to the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the 
House of Representatives the total ordinary receipts in 1914 were 
$734,637,166. Of this amount $245,751,004 or 33.4 per cent 
came from the liquor traffic. 

The revenue entrenchment was chiefly a national one. The 
revenue derived from the traffic by the combined state and local 
governments in I913 amounted to less than $80,000,000 which 
was only about four per cent of the revenues of those govern- 
ments.** 

Our government was financially interested in the perpetuation 
of the liquor traffic. It had adopted a policy which was in effect 
a partnership with the iniquitous trafic. Through the internal 
revenue system the government maintained a closer relation to 
the liquor traffic than toward any other industry. .To dissever 
that partnership was a task which partook of the characteristics 
of a major operation. 

National Prohibition was necessary to abolish the financial 
interest of the government and to reshape the revenues so as to 
make the government independent of a traffic which was destroy- 
ing the citizens of the nation. 

5. National Prohibition was essential because the powerful 
resources of the national government were needed to cope with 
the liquor power. It was thoroughly organized, backed by 
immense wealth, resourceful, vigilant, aggressive, regnant in 
politics and dominant in administration. | 

The liquor power’s aggressive promotion of liquor consump- 
tion, its ability to concentrate its forces in any state or locality to 
prevent the adoption of effective prohibitory laws, or, in case of 
their adoption, its ability to override and nullify them, its crea- 
tion and control of venal voters, its domination of politics, its 
alliances with the predatory interests and with the party machines, 
and its corruption of government, local, state and national, made 
it an adversary requiring the superlative exercise of national 
power. 

6. The separate states were not able to effectually prohibit, 
prevent or punish as a crime that which was sanctioned and pro- 


11 Bureau of the Census, Report on ‘Wealth, Debt and Taxation,” 1013, 
‘Vol. Il 


592 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


tected as a legitimate industry by neighboring states and by 
the overtowering influence of the general government. The op- 
ponents of national prohibition talked of “‘states rights.” But 
when a state sought to establish its right to be dry it was not 
able to achieve that right because the liquor traffic from its pro- 
tected base of operations in the wet states waged continuous 
warfare to break down the laws in the dry states. The problem 
was such that the states separately were not competent adequately 
to cope with it. 

Had the efforts towards prohibition been confined merely to 
adding state to state there would have been at least a few states 
in which the liquor power would have concentrated and prevented 
the adoption of prohibition. 

7. A national problem required a national solution. Only 
by national action was it possible to reach the national factors in 
the problem. The liquor aggression emanated from the big brew- 
eries, distilleries and wholesale houses and extended far beyond 
state lines. 

The traffic was entrenched in the national government. This 
manifestly required a national solution. It was centralized in 
great national organizations. Corresponding national central- 
ized power needed to be directed against it. A prohibitory law 
needed to have a jurisdiction wide enough to meet these factors 
in the problem. 

8. National Prohibition was the only adequate means to reach 
the sources of supply and stop the manufacture and sale of liquor 
throughout the United States. Prohibition utilizes the stoppage- 
at-source principle. It makes the manufacture for beverage pur- 
poses illegal. While a sale is a momentary transaction and is 
often difficult to prove, the making of liquor on any considerable 
scale can be easily detected, the brewery or distillery closed, the 
property confiscated and, occasionally at least, the maker ar- 
rested and punished. Although bootleggers may attempt to 
carry on their nefarious trade if they can obtain a supply, the 
manufacture on any extensive scale is a risky business and capital 
will not enter into it on a large scale. The manufacture can be 
reduced to a comparatively small amount. All the little moon- 
shine stills put together probably do not make as much whisky 
as did one distillery at Peoria in the pre-prohibition period. 

The main reason that the stoppage-at-source principle has not 
been more effective thus far has been due to the administration 
of the law. ‘This principle has only partially been put into opera- 
tion. A number of those charged with the enforcement of the 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 593 


law have been conspicuously opposed to the law they have been 
paid to enforce, with the result that too much whisky stored in 
the warehouses and too much industrial alcohol have been per- 
mitted to be diverted to beverage use and some breweries have 
been allowed to run. This is no argument against the principle 
of prohibition but merely against the kind of administration it 
has thus far been subjected to and against the continuance in office 
of the present type of administrators. 

g. Prohibition should be national in order to prohibit the 
importation from foreign countries and to prevent the interstate 
transportation. This alone was sufficient to make prohibition a 
national question, as Congress alone has power to “regulate com- 
merce with foreign nations and among the several states.” 

10. National prohibition was essential to establish a uniform 
national governmental standard. It makes the liquor traffic a 
crime throughout the jurisdiction of the United States. No 
longer can the liquor traffic be regarded as a business. National 
prohibition places it in the category of crimes where it belongs. 

National Prohibition outlaws the liquor traffic throughout the’ 
length and breadth of the nation. Furthermore, it does away with 
the former ignominious conflict between the federal government 
and the prohibition states under which the federal government 
was deriving a revenue from a traffic which many of the states 
in the interest of the public health, order, safety and morals had. 
outlawed. 

1r. The area of prohibition should be as comprehensive as 
possible to cope with such a widespread evil. As the consequences 
affect society as a whole the remedy should be applied by society 
as a whole, that is, by the national State. 

Professor Burgess says: “The national State is the most per- 
fect organ which has yet been attained in the civilization of the 
world for the interpretation of the human consciousness of 
riphtny 

12. Inthe adoption of National Prohibition the United States 
adopted a national standard of morals on the liquor question. 

The nation is the largest and final unit of action on matters per- 
taining to the public welfare. It is the tribunal to which great 
questions of morals are ultimately referred. For example cer- 
tain states wanted slavery. It was entrenched in government. 
It was insistently argued that it was a domestic institution and 
concerned the states alone. But the nation destroyed it. Utah 
wanted polygamy but the national standard compelled it to cease.. 


12 Burgess, Political Science and Constitutional Law, 1890, Vol, I, p. 86. 


594 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Louisiana wanted to operate a lottery but the nation stopped it. 
The general welfare required a uniform policy on these and 
other matters. The national conscience is the unit for a question 
of such far-reaching public concern as the liquor traffic. The 
public conscience of a great people has reached its highest level 
in establishing the principle of prohibition in the Constitution of 
the United States. 


WHY PROHIBITION IN THE CONSTITUTION 


Among the specific reasons for prohibition in the Constitution 
WOT eK: 

1. A constitutional amendment was needed to give the federal 
government the unquestioned constitutional power to directly 
suppress the liquor traffic. 

The federal government is a government of limited powers. 
Under its power over interstate and foreign commerce, its power 
to tax, which is the power to destroy, and other powers it could 
have indirectly broken the back of the liquor traffic. 

Furthermore, had the federal government been administered 
by a national party committed to prohibition which was also in 
power in most of the states there is no doubt that the combined 
federal and state powers could have been administered so as to 
have effectively prohibited the liquor traffic provided such a party 
continued in power. But there was considerable doubt con- 
cerning the authority of the federal government to prohibit the 
manufacture and sale of liquor directly. 

The Tenth Amendment provides: “The powers not delegated 
to the United States nor prohibited by it to the States, are re- 
served to the States respectively or to the people.” 

Although the federal government possesses police powers sup- 
plementary to its enumerated powers, what is known as the 
police power, that is, the power by which governmental authority 
is exercised in the interest of such subjects as the public health, 
the public order, the public safety and the public morals, was 
undelegated. It was generally regarded as being reserved to the 
states or to the people. 

Thus an amendment was needed to give the federal government 
the undisputed power to prohibit directly. 

2. An amendment which would be merely empowering was 
not sufficient. An amendment was needed to array the supreme 
authority of the government against the unparalleled resources of 
the liquor power so long entrenched in government and politics. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 595 


Had the amendment been merely an empowering one the liquor 
traffic would have sought to renew the battle at every Congres- 
sional election. So the Eighteenth Amendment went further. 

Of its own force it prohibited the liquor traffic and granted to 
both Congress and the states the power to enforce the constitu- 
tional provision by appropriate legislation. 

3. An amendment was needed to provide stability. It was 
sought to put beyond the reach of temporary changes and excite- 
ments and of manufactured propaganda a great principle upon 
which the permanent well-being of the nation depends. Through 
nearly seventy years state prohibition had been subject to vacil- 
lation. After the people by hard work had enacted a prohibitory 
law the nationally organized liquor power would keep up its 
efforts to discredit and repeal the law. 

The great difficulty of repealing an amendment to the Federal 
Constitution should serve notice on the liquor interests that there 
is no hope of having the liquor traffic revived as a legally pro- 
tected institution and that there is no use for them to keep 
up their organization. 

The very difficulty of amending the Constitution and the over- 
whelming support which is necessary to adopt an amendment 
gives it the supreme sanction of the nation. 

Amending the Constitution is the most difficult process as 
well as the most authoritative one known to our governmental 
system. The difficulty is illustrated by the fact that since the 
beginning of our government more than three thousand pro- 
posed amendments have been introduced in Congress but only 
nineteen have been adopted. All the liquor interests needed to 
have done to have prevented the adoption of the amendment was 
to have controlled a bare majority of one house in thirteen states. 
If the thirteen states having the smallest state Senates had been 
selected, the control of 159 state senators in those states could 
have blocked ratification. If the thirteen wettest states had been 
selected, the control of less than 250 state senators could have 
defeated ratification. But the liquor power, strong as it was, was 
absolutely unable to stem the tide of popular revulsion against it. 

Ratification of the Prohibition Amendment by forty-six states, 
the largest number of states and the largest proportion of states 
that ever ratified any amendment, and support thereof by 8o 
per cent of the legislators, the representatives of the people, should 
have settled for all time all question as to prohibition being the 
established policy of the nation and should have brought to an 
end both the pernicious activity of the organized liquor interests in 


596 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


politics and the catering to those interests by political leaders. 

4. A preeminent reason for a constitutional amendment was 
to invoke the supreme power of our national sovereign State, that 
is, our organized society, to overcome the liquor power. 

It should be observed that political scientists distinguish be- 
tween the State and government. The government is not the 
State. The government is the agency by which the State carries 
out its will. Back of the government is the Constitution and back 
of the Constitution is the sovereign State, the fundamental, su- 
preme power of the people.** 

In the United States the sovereign State, to which political 
scientists attribute original and superlative power, expresses itself 
through the amending process. Sovereignty inheres in the 
power which can amend the Constitution. The adoption of the 
Eighteenth Amendment was the expression of the sovereign 
will of the nation that the liquor traffic should be prohibited 
throughout the jurisdiction of the United States. It was the ex- 
pression of the national will in the most decisive, respected and 
authoritative manner known to our experience as a nation. 

5. Prohibition deserves a place in our Constitution as a 
worthy successor of the first eight amendments which comprise 
the Bill of Rights. 

If we analyze these amendments we shall see that they are a 
continuous series of declarations against ancient governmental 
wrongs and past departures from sound governmental principles. 
It required centuries of struggle before the people were enabled 
to secure the rights therein mentioned, such as the free exercise 
of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of 
petition, and trial by jury. 

The distinction between the great historic struggles to achieve 
these now established rights and the struggle for prohibition is 
that the former were struggles between the people on the one 
hand, and monarchy or absolutism on the other. The struggle 
for prohibition is the struggle of democracy against its own lower 
elements. Involved in this conflict is whether government by the 
people shall long endure, or whether it will be destroyed by cor- 
ruption from within. 

All of these struggles, historic and current, have had in com- 
mon the object to bring to an end the perpetuation of govern- 
mental wrongs and to promote the public welfare. 

From the beginnings of constitutional government, from 
Magna Charta down, great and grievous wrongs, especially 

18 Burgess, Political Science and Constitutional Law, Vol. II, Chap. I. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 597 


wrongs by the government itself, have been prohibited by the 
fundamental law. Especially has this been true of govern- 
mental wrongs which were liable to recur. The governmental 
protection and perpetuation of the liquor traffic was a wrong of 
such unparalleled enormity that its prohibition should be estab- 
lished in the Constitution. 

Said Robert H. Patton: 


The greatest crime and folly of all governments, in all times since 
civilization dawned, is the selling by the government to the liquor 
traffic the right to ruin its own citizenship, and, above all other 
wrongs of the past, that wrong ought to and must be barred by the 
great charter of the people.’* 


THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT 


The Eighteenth Amendment is a worthy successor of the 
Thirteenth Amendment. The generation of Lincoln placed in the 
Constitution the Thirteenth Amendment forever prohibiting 


the age-old evil of slavery. It is to the glory of America that _ 


the present generation has followed the example of their fathers 
by placing in the Constitution the Eighteenth Amendment for- 
ever prohibiting the age-old evil of alcohol. An amendment 
was deemed necessary to suppress permanently the slave power 
which was politically entrenched in one section of the country. 
Similarly there was still greater reason for an amendment to 
suppress the liquor power which was politically entrenched in 
many sections of the country. 

As by the Thirteenth Amendment the Constitution operated 
directly against the slave power and the slave trade, so the 
Eighteenth Amendment operates directly against the liquor power 
and the liquor traffic. 


Scope and Effect of the Amendment 


Many people thought that with the adoption of the Eighteenth 
Amendment the struggle was over, the victory was won. They 
thought that a Constitutional provision would be respected by 
every good citizen and did not anticipate that there would ever 
need to be a summons to a union of law-respecting citizens to 
enforce the Constitution. However, even a Constitutional amend- 
ment with its solemn sanction, its national standard, its expres- 


14 Patton, Article on “‘Constitutional Prohibition” in The Vindicator, December 
aa hoes, 


598 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


sion of sovereignty and its outlawry of liquor is inadequate if 
the administration of the government is in the hands of those 
opposed or indifferent to it. Prohibition requires constitutional 
and statutory law plus administration. 

Early in 1916, nearly two years before the amendment was 
submitted, the writer prepared a series of Studies on National 
Prohibition for use in the colleges and universities. One of the 
subtopics was on the “Scope and Effect of an Amendment.” It 
is still so applicable that it is here printed as it then appeared.” 


The actual effect of a constitutional provision is frequently over- 
estimated. There has been such a veneration for the Constitution 
that many people think that a few words in that instrument have 
some marvelous talismanic potency, that what the Constitution pre- 
scribes must therefore be. 

1. The Constitution is not self-executing. There are certain 
provisions in the Constitution which have never been put into opera- 
tion. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment provides that if a 
state limits the suffrage of adult males, it shall have its representa- 
tion in Congress reduced proportionately. Many states have notori- 
ously abridged such right of suffrage, but the means for enforcing 
the constitutional provision have been lacking and Congress has 
refused to enforce it. Article VI of the Constitution provides that 
debts of government under the Articles of Confederation should be 
valid against the United States, yet Congress refused to pay some 
of them. 

2. The fact is that “Congress by refusing to act can virtually 
nullify provisions of the organic law.” Another illustration is that 
Congress has never provided adequate machinery for enforcing the 
extradition clause of the Constitution.2° 

3. A prohibitory constitutional amendment will require save 
mentary legislation to make it workable and enforceable. An 
amendment declares the governmental principle and confers the 
power, the details are left to Congress. Enacting legislation is 
needed to (a) define the terms, (b) provide the penalties, (c) 
specify who shall enforce and prescribe the duties of the officers, 
(d) provide the appropriations for the enforcing machinery, (ce) 
provide for supervision over the traffic in liquor for legitimate pur- 
poses, (f) furnish effective enforcement remedies, such as injunc- 
tion, abatement, etc., and (g) provide all other legislation needed to 
make it workable and effective. (h) Congress will also have to re- 
organize the whole taxation scheme of the government to supply 
the necessary revenue. 

4. There is no legal way of forcing Congress to carry out its 

15 Colvin, ‘‘National Prohibition, A Series of Outline Studies,’ in the Inter- 


collegiate Statesman, February-March, 1916. 
16 Reinsch, Readings on American Federal Government, p. 755. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 599 


obligation to pass the needed legislation. It is impossible to man- 
damus Congress. Ex-President Taft has recently called attention 
to an analogous case of the inability to compel Congress to fulfl 
its obligations. 

The Constitution provides that the President and the Senate shall 
have power to make treaties. Those treaties may incur obligations 
to foreign nations, but if Congress refuses to carry them out it 
may break the obligation and it has done so more than once. 

5. There is likewise no legal means to require the executive de- 
partment to enforce the law. Congress may provide enacting legis- 
lation but unless put into operation by a vigorous executive it may 
amount to little. The executive nullification of the first anti-canteen 
law was an illustration of this. 

6. The failure to enforce constitutional prohibition in the states 
indicates a parallel situation. In 1911 Maine voted to retain pro- 
hibition in her constitution, but this was followed by a period of 
non-enforcement, one of the worst in the history of the state. In 
Kansas for a quarter of a century prohibition was in the constitu- 
tion, but was not effectively enforced. A part of the reason for 
this non-enforcement was because of the influence of the lquor 
traffic outside the state, but it was also largely due to political in- 
fluence within. On other subjects the evidence shows that a mere 
establishment of a principle in the Constitution is not sufficient. 

For example New York has an anti-gambling provision in its 
constitution which was a dead letter for fifteen years, until Gov- 
ernor Hughes took the initiative and put through legislation to stop 
race-track gambling. 

7. The only control by which effective enforcement can be 
secured is political control—the election of those who will enforce 
prohibition. There are two aspects of government. One is con- 
stitutional law and the other is politics. Of these politics furnishes 
the dynamic to put prohibition into operation. Here is the vital 
point in the whole problem and will be discussed in the next topic. 


The next topic was, “Prohibition and the American Consti- 
tutional and Political System’”’ which has been expanded in Chap- 
ter X XIX of this book. 

The point which needs emphasis is, that even with the prin- 
ciple of prohibition in the Constitution it is effective only when 
the control of the government is in the hands of those who will 
enforce it. 


WHY COMPLETE PROHIBITION—BEER AND WINE 


Since the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment there has 
been a noisome propaganda to bring back beer and wine. Among 


600 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


the reasons for the complete prohibition of all intoxicating 
liquors, including beer and wine, are: 

1. Beer and wine are intoxicating. Every prohibitory law 
supported by the advocates of prohibition from the time of the 
passage of the Maine Law in 1851 down has included the prohi- 
bition of beer and wine. Through all these years they have been 
regarded as intoxicating liquors which should be prohibited. 

Three states which in the fifties enacted prohibitory laws lost 
their laws by the very process which the beer and wine advocates 
of 1926 seek to put into operation. The amending of their laws 
to permit the lighter alcoholics was in each case the entering 
wedge which led to the entire loss of the prohibitory laws." 

2. Alcohol injures society no matter in what beverage con- 
sumed. It possesses the same characteristics, the same proper- 
ties, wherever found. Because a given quantity of beer may con- 
tain only about one-tenth as-much alcohol as an equal quantity of 
whisky by no means proves that beer is only one-tenth as dan- 
gerous as whisky. The average beer drinker usually drinks 
several times the quantity of beer as the average whisky drinker 
does of whisky. Moreover beer drinking is more likely to be 
continuous. The amount of alcohol consumed by the ordinary 
beer drinker approximates that consumed by the ordinary whisky 
drinker. 

3. Modern scientific investigations authoritatively demonstrate 
the injurious consequences of beer and wine. Many of the scien- 
tific investigations regarding the effects of alcohol which have 
been made in recent years, which have been so condemnatory of 
alcohol, have been investigations regarding the effects of liquor 
in small or very moderate quantities. 

One of the most recent was a thorough and deeply scientific 
investigation by Dr. Walter R. Miles of the Carnegie Institution, 
Washington, D. C., regarding the effect of alcoholic beverages as 
weak as 2.75 per cent alcohol by weight. These were found to 
have decidedly toxic effects and caused a surprising diminution 
in efficiency."* Scientific students of alcohol have gathered a 
great array of facts regarding the consequences of the lighter 
liquors which provide an overwhelming argument for their 
prohibition.” 

4. The habitual use of beer or wine keeps multitudes in a 
state of constant alcoholization even though many of those in 


17 Those states were Iowa, Michigan, and Massachusetts. 

18 Walter R. Miles, Alcohol and Human Efficiency (1924). 

19 The best source for materials on this subject is the Scientific Temperance 
Federation, Boston. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 601 


that condition may assert that they have never been intoxicated. 
A modern State cannot permit multitudes of its citizens to be kept 
in a condition of stupefaction. 

5. Beer and wine produce alarming effects upon the succeed- 
ing generation. In its effects upon heredity, scientists now recog- 
nize that the habitual consumption of the lighter liquors is in 
some respects more deleterious than the occasional drinking of 
the stronger liquors, due to the fact that alcohol is constantly 
present in the system. 

6. Beer produces astounding brutalizing effects upon indi- 
viduals and nations. Back in the eighties a study was made of 
the offenses for which arrests were made in New York City for 
a six-year period, 1881 to 1886, and a comparison was made 
of those committed by the Irish and the German population, the 
former known as whisky drinkers and the latter as beer drinkers. 
It was found that, while whisky was responsible for more crimes 
of passion, beer drinkers committed, in proportion to their num- 
bers, 73 per cent more deliberate offenses.”° 

A large majority of the premeditated and atrocious crimes 
were committed by the beer drinkers. The World War revealed 
the brutalizing effects of beer upon national character. 

7. To permit the return of beer and wine would be to permit 
the return of those beverages which in 1914 furnished over 93 
per cent of the volume of liquor and nearly 60 per cent of the 
alcohol. 

8. To permit the return of beer and wine would be to bring 
back the major proportion of the colossal wastes of the drink 
bill. In 1913 and 1914 about 59 per cent of the drink bill was 
spent for beer and wine. In the latter year the expenditure for 
beer and wine was about $1,448,000,000. 

Had the consumption of malt and vinous liquors increased in 
the eleven years from 1914 to 1925 in the same proportion as 
they did in the eleven years preceding 1914, 41.4 per cent, the 
drink bill for these beverages alone in 1925, making allowance 
for the diminished value of the dollar, sixty cents in the pre-war 
period being equivalent to one dollar in 1925—the bill for beer 
and wine alone would have been more than three and one-third 
billion dollars. ; 

Had beer and wine remained the drink bill would have been 
more, as most of the money formerly spent for spirituous liquors 
which in 1914 amounted to nearly a billion dollars would have 
continued to have been spent in liquor channels. 


20 The Political Prohibitionist (1888), p. 80. 


602 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


It is safe to say that if beer and wine should return the aggres- 
sions of the brewery interests unleashed from prohibitory re- 
straints, plus the moral reaction resulting from the failure to 
maintain the national standard, plus the increasing alcoholic con- 
sumption resulting from liquor’s omnipresence, would lift the 
drink bill to not far short of what it would have been but for 
prohibition—approximately five billion dollars. 

9. They are the beverages which started the great majority of 
the ultimate victims of alcohol on their downward course. Most 
drunkards started their downward career with beer or wine. It 
was wine drunkenness which was responsible for the decay of the 
early nations, the process of distillation not having been invented 
until the Middle Ages. It was wine drunkenness which was so 
severely condemned in the Bible. 

10. The breweries owned most of the saloons in many of our 
cities. They were responsible for the larger share of the evils 
of the saloon and particularly for the political corruption which 
was so notorious. The brewers habitually violated the restrictive 
laws. Despite some of their professions they continuously 
blocked efforts for the elimination of the grossest evils of the 
saloon. In Chicago, brewery agents were almost invariably 
bondsmen for the saloons that were run as adjuncts to the mon- 
ster houses of prostitution which existed in the pre-prohibition 
period. The lowest depths of debauchery and degradation re- 
sulted from the traffic carried on by the breweries. 

t1. The return of beer and wine would create the appetite for 
the stronger liquors. One of the inherent characteristics of alco- 
hol is that it is habit forming and produces a progressive ap- 
petite. Most drinkers want it for its intoxicating effect. Many 
of them would soon cease to be satisfied with lighter liquors. 
The lighter liquors would increase the appetite and the demand for 
the stronger liquors. 

12. The places which would sell the lighter liquors would pay 
no respect to the law against selling the stronger liquors. They 
would sell all they could. Massachusetts in the seventies modified 
her prohibition law to permit the licensing of places to sell malt 
liquors. Out of 2,584 places in Boston where liquor was licensed 
to be sold, only 17 sold beer alone. Liquor sellers could not be 
depended upon to respect any law which sought to restrain them. 

13. If sold by direct sale to the homes, as the wet slogan 
“beer and wine but no saloons” seems to indicate, it would create 
an alcoholic environment in the home. 

It would transplant the saloon characteristics to the home. 


THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL PROHIBITION 603 


The saloon was so bad largely because it was the congregating 
place of those whose brains were befuddled and perverted by 
alcohol. Beer and wine in the homes would degrade the women 
and children. One of the reasons why the race has been able 
to withstand the degenerating effects of alcohol as well as it has 
is due to the fact that the great majority of the mothers have 
been substantially free from alcohol. Bring it into the home, 
poison the mothers of men, and the race would be imperiled as 
never before. 

14. It would make the enforcement of anti-liquor laws im- 
practicable. Chief Justice Taft said: ‘No such distinction as that 
between beer and wine on the one hand and spirituous liquor on 
the other is practicable as a police measure.” 

15. The return of beer would mean the revivification of the 
breweries and the corrupt brewery influence in politics. The 
breweries would furnish the basis of operations for the continual 
domination of politics, probably on a worse scale than before, for 
if they should once get back they would take protective measures 
to try to prevent being expelled again. 

16. The expressed sentiment of the people is decidedly against 
the return of beer and wine. Every prohibition state which has 
voted upon the proposition has defeated it and only one non- 
prohibition state in a real referendum has favored it.2' Five 
states which formerly had voted for prohibition have voted upon 
the question of modification to permit beer and wine since 1915 
and in every case they gave a much larger majority against beer 
and wine than they gave for the original adoption of prohibi- 
tion.”” 

17. Unless the Eighteenth Amendment should be repealed, of 
which there is no likelihood, it would be impossible to bring back 
beer and wine without a brazen disregard and nullification of the 
Constitution of our country.”* 

The benefits of national prohibition to the great mass of citi- 
zens have been too great, the ideals of America are too well 


21 Massachusetts is the non-prohibition state referred to. In 1920 a beer and 
wine proposal carried by a majority of 11,064. In 1922 a state enforcement 
law was defeated by a majority of 103,876. But in 1924 Massachusetts voted for 
a state enforcement law by a majority of 8,183. The latest vote indicates a 
reversal of the former anti-prohibition attitude and a turning to prohibition. 

22 See infra, Chapter XXIII, p. 436. 

23 For material on the beer and wine question, see Cyclopedia of Temperance 
and Prohibition, pp. 362-7; Cyclopedia of Temperance, Prohibition and Public 
Morals, pp. 40-47 and p. 260; Pitman, Alcohol and the State, pp. 250-286; Cora 
Frances Stoddard, pamphlets, Massachusetts’ Experience with Exempting Beer 
from Prohibition and Shall We Save Beer and Wine? Also see Bibliography 
at end of Chapter XXIV. 


C04 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


grounded, the soul of the nation is too dear a forfeit for our 
country to retreat from its high position. 

Complete national constitutional prohibition must not only be 
retained but must be enforced and such great unquestioned bene- 
fits obtained as to cause the United States to be emulated by the 
other nations of the world. 





Chapter XXIX 


PROHIBITION AND THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL 
SYSTEM 


Prohibition is a governmental measure. How ito bring the 
powers of government to bear to suppress the liquor traffic has 
always been the chief problem connected with the anti-liquor 
movement. Expressed from the standpoint of popular rule, the 
supreme problem connected with the prohibition of the liquor 
traffic is how to provide for the transmission of the will of the 
people to the government in such a manner as to achieve effective 
prohibition. 

It was never difficult to convince the public that the liquor 
traffic engendered great evils, physiological, economic, industrial, 
social, political and moral. Neither was it especially difficult to 
get most people to agree that the nation would be immeasurably 
better off with the whole liquor traffic prohibited. Thirty-three 
states had adopted state prohibition before the Eighteenth Amend- 
ment went into effect. In the thirty-two states in which the 
people have expressed themselves by a direct, binding vote they 
have given prohibition an aggregate net majority of more than 
1,350,000. Forty-six states ratified the Eighteenth Amendment 
with the representatives of the people voting more than four to 
one in its favor. 

But, notwithstanding the tremendous public sentiment, there 
is a widespread feeling that there has been something lacking in 
the application of that sentiment to government. The reasons 
for that lack have been little understood and variously interpreted. 
Some have jumped to the conclusion that prohibition itself is a 
failure. Others who hope for its more complete success, never- 
theless, have had doubts arise because of enforcement not being 
better. Only a few have comprehended that the chief defect has 
been inherent in the inadequate methods which have been-employed 
in attempting to achieve prohibition, our governmental system 
being as it is. The outstanding fact is that in a government by 


political parties prohibition has lacked the support of the party 
605 


606 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


in power. It has been a governmental measure without a gov- 
ernment to support it. 

Through more than half a century the thinkers of the Pro- 
hibition party upheld two doctrines above all others. One was 
national prohibition. The other was the need of a political party 
to support it. The former was conditioned upon the latter. Pro- 
hibition without a political party committed to it to administer 
it was regarded as decidedly inadequate for the settlement of the 
liquor question. 

The Prohibition party’s plan for settlement was national pro- 
hibition with a party to administer it. 

Why is a political party committed to prohibition needed? 

The purpose of this chapter is to present a study of this central 
question underlying the philosophy of the method of the Pro- 
hibition party. This chapter is a study in political science as 
applied to the prohibition question. 

There were three main groups of factors which underlay the 
argument for the Party. The first group was based upon the fact 
that prohibition is a governmental measure requiring federal and 
state legislation, and not merely legislation but the utilization of 
the full powers of the government, legislative, executive and 
judicial, and national, state and local. The Prohibitionists em- 
phasized especially the importance of administration in addition 
to legislation. 

The second group of factors was based upon the fact that the 
government of the United States is a government by political 
parties. 

The third group was based upon the unparalleled political 
power exerted by the liquor traffic. Some of the factors under- 
lying liquor’s power have been discussed in the chapter on the 
Liquor Power. 

This study seeks (a): to analyze the content of prohibition as a 
governmental measure on the one hand, and, on the other, (0) 
to analyze the American constitutional and political system to 
discover the means whereby public sentiment may be transmitted 
to and made effective in government. This involves a study of 
the reasons for party government. There will be a discussion 
of (c) party government and prohibition, and (d) of the rela- 
tion of our political party system to liquor’s political power, to be 
concluded (e) by a consideration of the political philosophy of . 
the Prohibition party. A volume is needed to present the sub- 
ject adequately. Only a summary can be given here. 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 607 


ANALYSIS OF PROHIBITION 


I. Prohibition is a governmental measure. It aims to utilize 
the powers of government to suppress the liquor traffic and destroy 
the liquor power. It can be effective only when put into opera- 
tion by government exercising its various powers. It cannot be 
considered as something distinct and apart from government. 
However high, noble and ideal the aim of prohibition may be it 
becomes operative only through governmental agencies. In the 
long continued efforts for the suppression of the liquor traffic 
it always has been recognized as a matter of course that moral, 
educational and other agencies have a large and indispensable 
part. On the other hand, these are inadequate without prohibi- 
tion. In the effort of organized society to overthrow an anti- 
social institution the utilization of government is a primary 
essential. 

2. Prohibition needs legislation and should have continuous 
legislative support. Legislative support is essential not only for 
the adoption of the original act but it is essential for such supple- 
mentary legislation as may be needed from time to time. It is 
seldom that a complete law covering all the requirements is 
adopted at the beginning. Very few of the prohibition states 
were able to secure the additional legislation which was needed 
except after long continued effort, and some not at all. 

In Georgia, for example, the original prohibition law of 1907 
was seriously weakened by an adverse court decision in 1908 
which gave a very liberal interpretation to the term “intoxicating 
liquors.” But it was eight years before that state was able to 
secure the additional legislation needed. 

In Congress only one important supplementary measure to 
provide for carrying the Eighteenth Amendment into effect has 
been passed in the seven years since the enactment of the original 
Volstead Law and that one was weakened by party agencies not 
in sympathy with prohibition, notably by the Rules Committee 
of the House of Representatives. In the Congress ending 
March 4, 1925, several needed bills were strongly urged by the 
united temperance and prohibition organizations and the great 
church bodies of the country cooperating through the National 
Legislative Conference, but not one was passed. 

The continuous support of the legislative branch is also needed 
to provide adequate appropriations for enforcement and to pass 
other correlative legislation. 


608 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


3. Prohibition imperatively requires administration. A pro- 
hibitory law is not self-executing. I:ven the supreme law of the 
land, the Constitution, is not self-executing. Prohibition re- 
quires positive and aggressive support by executive officials. It 
needs on the part of enforcement officials initiative, devotion to 
duty, and incorruptible character. Besides, administrative sup- 
port must be continuous. The passage of a law may be accom- 
plished in a short period, the adoption of a law under the referen- 
dum is a single operation. But administration is a continuous 
process and requires a permanent policy of government. Whether 
the law is a success or not depends almost altogether on its ad- 
ministration. If not enforced it becomes mere verbiage. Eugene 
W. Chafin in one of his most famous speeches, “Government by 
Administration,” declared that government is one per cent law 
and ninety-nine per cent administration. This was regarded by 
some as hyperbole, a figure .of speech to emphasize a most vital 
fact that in relation to a subject like prohibition administration is 
by far the most important part of government. But six years’ 
experience with the administration of national prohibition con- 
vinced many close observers that Mr. Chafin’s ratio was not 
much exaggerated. It was more nearly literal than figurative. 

Yet notwithstanding the preeminent importance of administra- 
tion, over and over again in the history of the prohibition move~ 
ment the people have struggled strenuously to obtain the law and 
then, having placed the law upon the statute book, have entrusted 
its execution to officials not in sympathy with it, many of whom 
were glad to see it fail, many of whom were catering to the liquor 
vote or, at best, were bound in political partnership with those 
who were unwilling to alienate the votes of the liquor element. 

The administrative officers involved in prohibition enforcement 
include many grades, local, state and national. They include, 
locally, constables, police, sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys, jury 
commissioners, or officers who make up the jury lists, supervisors, 
or those who control appropriations for law enforcement, and 
judges of various ranks. In the states they include various 
officers including the Governors. In the nation they include 
federal prohibition officers, the federal Prohibition Commis- 
sioner, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, the collectors of 
the port, United States commissioners, United States marshals, 
United States district attorneys, and federal judges. Finally, 
administration requires the Secretary of the Treasury, the At- 
torney-General, and above all the President of the United States. 
A large proportion of the officials appointed by the President 





THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 609 


are related in one way or another to this question. Even the type 
of diplomatic officers appointed influences the degree in which 
America’s constitutional principle is respected abroad and whether 
other nations will follow America’s example. In the Department 
of Justice alone there are about six thousand appointees, a large 
proportion of whom are involved, more or less, in the enforce- 
ment of prohibition. There is no other question which involves 
so many groups of executive and judicial officers. 

4. Although prohibition is preeminently a national question, 
it is also a state and local question. It was never intended that all 
of the responsibility for the enforcement of the Eighteenth 
Amendment should be undertaken by the federal government 
alone. It was not intended that the national government should 
furnish a sufficiently large number of enforcement officials to 
detect all classes of liquor violations throughout the whole coun- 
try. 

Up to the present time there have not been one-seventh as many 
federal prohibition officers working in the field at one time 
throughout the territory of the United States as there are police 
officers in the city of New York alone. 

All of the states but one have passed state enforcement laws 
under the concurrent power clause of the Eighteenth Amendment 
which makes it the duty of state authorities to help enforce that 
Amendment. It is thus a state question. Furthermore, by 
reason of the fact that most of the administration of state laws is 
decentralized, enforced by officers chosen locally, prohibition is 
also a local question. There is no other question in the country 
which is so all-embracing and so involves all branches of govern- 
ment, national, state and local. 

5. Prohibition, requiring both legislation and administration 
and involving national, state and local governments, is the most 
completely governmental question of our time. 

Prohibition is to be differentiated from most other ques- 
tions. The tariff and money questions are exclusively national 
and chiefly legislative. The movement for woman suffrage was 
exclusively legislative. It was concerned only with the expression 
of the public will and when adopted required no governmental 
authorities to enforce it. The income tax amendment was merely 
a power-conferring amendment and when adopted became a part 
of the federal taxation system, the operation of which produced 
compliance similar in degree to that which all taxation laws cus- 
tomarily receive. The League of Nations proposal required 
action only by the President and the Senate. 


610 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Prohibition is therefore different from and, from a govern- 
mental standpoint, paramount to other questions in that it needs 
continuous support by all departments of government, legislative, 
executive and judicial, and all spheres, national, state and local. 

6. Prohibition is subject to strong and persistent political 
opposition. This opposition is organized, well financed and re- 
sourceful. It 1s adept and unscrupulous in the use of the political 
methods it employs. Even since outlawed it retains much of its 
former political power and continues to benefit by the survival, 
to a large degree, of its political alliances. 

Among the elements in opposition are those financially inter- 
ested in the traffic and those who have acquired the alcohol habit 
and want liquor back. But the largest number is composed of 
those who are victims of the continuous bombardment of the wet 
propaganda, those who are affected by the systematic perversion 
of public opinion. These afte the ones whose votes the outlaw 
traffic seeks to wield. By taking advantage of certain features of 
our political system, including closeness of elections, pivotal states, 
and party organizations uncommitted to prohibition, the liquor 
power, though outlawed, continues to elicit the obedience of the 
political parties. | 

Considering the comprehensive requisites for the enforce- 
ment of prohibition and particularly the intense struggle to over- 
come opposition and make it effective, there is apparent, even after 
prohibition has been placed in the Constitution, the need of a 
union of the supporters of prohibition which will have for its 
object the marshaling and the utilizing of all powers of govern- 
ment. That union needs to be continuous until opposition is 
overcome, until prohibition is established both in law and in ad- 
ministration and its larger beneficent and constructive results 
achieved. 

Given these elements in the problem of making prohibition 
regnant and the analysis of liquor’s political power as given in 
Chapter X XVII, the next step is to analyze our constitutional 
and political system. 


THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL SYSTEM 


The problem of the transmission of the public will, the will that 
national prohibition shall prevail, to government in such a way 
as to make it effective in operation requires going to the bottom of 
our constitutional and political system. 

Analyzing our governmental system, including both constitu- 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 611 


tional and political aspects, there are at least ten factors which 
have a bearing upon this problem. 

1. The separation of the powers between the legislative, 
executive and judicial branches of the government. 

2. The bicameral principle under which the legislative author- 
ity is divided between two houses differently chosen, each with a 
check upon the other. 

3. The division of power between the national and state gov- 
ernments. 

4. The state electoral method of electing the President. 

s. The diversity in length of terms of office of the President, 
Senators and Representatives. 

6. The broad powers of the President and his exalted position 
as the sole representative of the whole people, the spokesman of 
the nation. 

7. The development of the national party system. 

8. Universal suffrage and the large increase in the electorate. 

9g. The multiplicity of offices to be filled. 

10. The convention system of nominating the President. 

The first six factors, which comprise certain features of our 
constitutional system, are now regarded as furnishing some of the 
most fundamental and compelling reasons for the high degree of 
party government which we have in the United States. 

The members of the convention which framed the Constitution 
in 1787 had a distrust of government by the majority. They set 
up an elaborate system of checks and balances, separations of 
powers and divisions of authority whereby they thought that 
direct majority rule would be prevented. 

Hamilton, Madison and others who were members of the Con- 
vention feared that without the separation of powers and an 
elaborate system of checks the time might come when the prop- 
ertyless masses would arise and sweep away the rights of property 
which it was an aim of the Constitution to protect. So the system 
they adopted was admirably fitted to check, negative, block and 
prevent, but it was soon found to be a check and hindrance to 
those desiring to utilize the government for good purposes as 
well as those desiring to control government for bad or selfish 
purposes. To obtain desirable ends through government it 1s 
necessary to exercise affirmative governmental authority and to 
do that it becomes necessary to organize and gain control of all 
branches of government. As will be shown, the political party 
was the agency evolved for this purpose. 

It is interesting to note that the framers of the Constitution had 


612 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


a decided fear of parties, factions, as they were regarded then. 
James Madison in Number 10 of the Federalist discusses the 
subject, setting forth that the system of representative govern- 
ment, the series of obstacles set up in the Constitution and the 
wide extent of the area of the Republic would insure against 
factions or parties. Washington devoted a large part of his 
Farewell Address to a warning against parties. 

One of the most striking paradoxes of political history is that 
our system of party government developed exactly contrary to 
what was intended by the framers of the Constitution and largely 
to surmount the very obstacles set up against it. A thoughtful 
writer has said that if we omit the tremendous struggle over 
slavery and secession the development of parties is the greatest 
fact in our constitutional history.* 


CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS OF THE PARTY SYSTEM 


Amplifying the features of the Constitution above mentioned 
which made the party system inevitable: 

1. A number of leading political scientists have called atten- 
tion to the separation of powers as a reason why parties devel- 
oped. The framers of the Constitution, under the influence of 
certain political theories widely held in the eighteenth century, 
made very conspicuous the separation of powers between the 
legislative department, the executive department and the judicial 
department. But in the actual operation of the government, co- 
operation between the legislative and the executive departments 
is essential. Those who are interested in carrying through a 
certain policy of government should be able to control not only 
the making of the law but its execution. One of the reasons for 
the development of the party system was to provide better co- 
operation and harmony between these two branches. 

President Goodnow of Johns Hopkins University has pointed 
out that there are two primary functions of the State. One is 
to provide for the expression of the public will, and the other is 
to provide for the execution of the public will. The public will 
may be expressed in the most authoritative manner through the 
power which can amend the Constitution but ordinarily it is 
expressed chiefly through the legislative branch. The execution 
of the public will is by the executive and judicial branches. But 
“no expression of the will of the State is anything more than an 


1 Professor A. C. McLaughlin, The Courts, the Constitution and Parties, 
p. Trst 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 613 


empty phrase if the body which expresses it has no control over 
its execution.” ” 


Lack of harmony between the law and its execution results in 
political paralysis. An expression of the State will practically 
amounts to nothing if it is not executed.® 


The party is the agency which has developed to secure harmony 
between the expression and the execution of the public will. It 
provides the means whereby the expression of the public will 
can be carried into effect by administration. Professor Henry 
Jones Ford of Princeton University calls attention to the dis- 
tinction between the function of parties in England and here. 


In England party elicits the expression of the will of the nation; 
in this country it must also provide for its execution so that it is 
virtually a part of government itself, connecting the executive and 
legislative departments and occupying the place which in the parlia- 
mentary type of government is filled by the ministry.* 


2. Similarly, with the division of legislative power between 
two houses, one made up of representatives of districts with 
diverse local interests and the other made up of the representatives 
of the states, each house with different rules of legislative pro- 
cedure, there needs to be an agency to provide cooperation between 
the two. 

Woodrow Wilson pointed out that the checks and balances 
of the Constitution, and especially the fact that there was no 
machinery in the Constitution for combining the two houses 
with each other and with the Executive, was one of the reasons 
for such an extraordinary development of party authority in 
the United States.° 

A study, by the writer, of The Bicameral Principle in the New 
York Legislature which was his Doctor of Philosophy dissertation 
at Columbia University, published in 1913, showed that the party 
is the agency which envelops and coordinates both houses and 
the other departments of government as well. The party nomi- 
nates the candidates, conducts the campaign, raises the campaign 
fund and elects the members of both houses. 

Among other subjects investigated, a study was made of elec- 
tion returns with reference to the correspondence in the vote 
between the different candidates of the same party, New York 


2 Goodnow, Politics and Administration, p. 49. 

3 ibid., Ps 23: 

4H. J. Ford, The Rise and Growth of American Politics, p. 220. 
5 Constitutional Government in the United States, Chapter VIII. 


614 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


being a state where the form of ballot provides for the grouping 
of the candidates by the offices rather than in a party column. 
The different candidates whose votes were compared with each 
other were those for the Assembly, for the Senate, for Congress 
and for Secretary of State, the latter an office on the state 
ticket which usually represents the normal party vote. Although 
five elections were studied and there were oscillations forth and 
back from one party to the other, in the large majority of the 
counties in New York the maximum variation between different 
candidates of the same party at the same election was less than 
three per cent. The party obtained substantially the same number 
of votes for all of its candidates. Whether a man was elected 
depended almost wholly upon the efficiency of the party organiza- 
tion rather than upon the campaigning of the individual candi- 
date. Furthermore, the great majority of the assembly districts 
voted for the same party year after year. One hundred and 
twenty-three districts out of one hundred and fifty voted for the 
same party four elections out of five. 

When the two houses were of the same party the average 
number of measures enacted by the Legislature in a six-year 
period was 699. Ina succeeding session when the houses were 
controlled by opposite parties only 369 measures were enacted, 
showing that without the party to harmonize the two houses 
legislative business was greatly hampered. 

The study made of the New York Legislature shows that not 
only does the party customarily correlate both houses of the legis- 
lative branch but the party in power controls every step of the 
legislative process subsequent to the introduction of bills.® 

Digressing from a discussion of the coordinating function 
of the party and considering the party control of legislation, it 
is to be noted: 

The party organizes the legislature. The presiding officer of 
the Senate, the Lieutenant-Governor, is nominated and elected by 
the party. The Speaker of the lower house is chosen by a party 
caucus, as is also the President pro tem of the Senate. The pre- 
siding officers of the houses are prime agencies of party control. 
In the national House of Representatives the power of the 
Speaker has been reduced since 1910 but the power to appoint 
committees is exerted by a Committee on Committees which is 
likewise a powerful agency of party. The outstanding com- 
mittees, especially in the state legislatures, are frequently con- 


6D. Leigh Colvin, The Bicameral Principle in the New Vork Legislature, 
Chapter VIII. 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 615 


stituted with reference to what their action will be regarding 
legislation in which the party is interested.” 

In the New York Legislature on over nine-tenths of the bills 
which reach a vote the action of the committee becomes the action 
of the house. The great majority of bills are killed in committee. 
The Rules Committee with its power to select measures from 
crowded calendars and bring them forward to a vote is preemi- 
nently a party agency and because of being such its rule is almost 
Jaw even when it brings in reports limiting: debate and preventing 
amendments. 

It was the Rules Committee of the national House of Represen- 
tatives which changed and weakened the Supplemental Prohibi- 
tion Bill of 1921 after it had been reported in satisfactory form 
by the regular standing committee which had acted upon it. 

In the New York Legislature in the closing weeks of the 
session, when most of the legislation is enacted, the Rules Com- 
mittee of the Assembly in its capacity as a party agency has 
almost absolute control. 

Other party agencies employed in Congress are the floor leader, 
the party whip, the steering committee and the party caucus. 
The latter, totally without legal sanction and unforeseen by the 
framers of the Constitution, has at times wielded extraordinary 
power. In the first session of the Sixty-third Congress, 1913, 
party control was carried so far that the majority party caucus 
passed a rule that no committee should report a bill to the House 
unless express permission had been granted by the party caucus. 

Thus with the power to organize the House, with the power 
to appoint committees which shape the bills and frame the 
issues, with the power to select the measures which shall be acted 
upon, with the power to limit debate and prevent amendments, 
and the power to mobilize votes for measures favored by the 
steering committee, the majority party is practically supreme. 

Furthermore, in addition to the agencies and enginery of 
party within a legislative body there is the pressure of the party 
outside. When terms are short, as in the lower house of Con- 
gress, the Representatives are almost continuously candidates and 
they are subject to the interests of the party which nominated and 
elected them, and particularly to the active, effective part of the 
party, which usually is the party machine. 

Thus party operations within and those without legislative 
halls concur and converge in maintaining party supremacy. 

In answer to the assertion of some that party has little to 


7 Haines, The Minnesota Legislature of rort. 


616 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


do with legislation because within the legislature party alignments 
are made only upon a small proportion of the bills, it should be 
said that the outstanding reason is that party control is exercised 
prior to the voting stage, through the agencies above mentioned. 
Besides, there are only a few subjects on which there is a di- 
vergence between the parties. This is evidenced by the fact that 
in several national campaigns, out of twenty or more planks in 
each major party platform there were only from one to three 
subjects in each campaign on which there was a divergence, and 
such divergences as existed were chiefly national rather than 
state.° 

Other reasons for few party alignments in legislatures are that 
a large proportion of the bills voted upon are of minor importance, 
and also the fact that the minority party normally recognizes the 
responsibility of the major party for legislation. 

The above, in brief, are some of the means by which party 
controls the legislative branch. It controls administration perhaps 
even more completely. 

Returning to the analysis of our constitutional system as it 
relates to the party as a coordinating agency: 

3. Another division of power is between the nation and the 
states. Says Professor Beard: 


Moreover, three features in the structure of our federal system 
make party government and strong party organization indispensable 
if the will of the voters is to be realized. In the first place, the 
legislative powers are divided between the federal Congress and the 
state legislatures, so that if a party has a policy that requires federal 
and state legislation it must be in power in both governments.° 


Similarly, the system of decentralization of state administration 
whereby state laws are executed by officials chosen locally makes 
it needful that the party control local government as well as 
national and state. | 

4. The state electoral method of electing the President in 
which the states vote separately, and each state votes as a sepa- 
rate entity, laid the foundation for the need of a party as a 
nation-wide enveloping organization in order to combine a ma- 
jcrity of the electoral votes to obtain the Presidency. The high- 
est prizes are the populous states with large electoral votes. 

5. The diversity in the length of terms of the President, 


8C, E, Merriam, The American Party System, pp. 209-212. | 

9C. A, Beard, American Government and Politics, 3rd edition, 1920, p, 101. 
The two other features mentioned are separation of powers and multiplicity of 
officers. 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 617 


Senators and Representatives, the terms of the latter being two, 
the President four, and the Senators six years, prevents obtain- 
ing control of the government at one time and thus requires 
party organizations to be strong, permanently organized, and 
continuous in their operation in order to obtain and maintain 
control of government. “To carry on American government suc- 
cessfully requires a continuous purpose on the part of the voters, 
either to change the policy of the government or to hold fast to 
what they have acquired.” *° 

The requirement for permanence and strength resulted in the 
party machines. These in turn acquired too great strength. Par- 
ties came to be ends in themselves and became a hindrance to, 
rather than a vehicle for, the public will. Said James Bryce in his 
American Commonwealth: “The fewer have become their prin- 
ciples and the fainter their interest in these principles the more 
perfect has become their organization.”’ 

So perverted did the machines become that many citizens be- 
came prejudiced against parties and party government in any 
form. 

6. The broad powers of the President, including his relation 
to the legislative and judicial branches, comprise the highest ob- 
jective in politics. “It is the rule of our politics that no vexed 
question is settled except by executive policy.” ** “The attempt 
of the founding Fathers to keep the Presidency out of politics 
has resulted in making presidential elections the dominant feature 
of the whole political process.” 7? The President is the direct 
representative of the people as a whole. A Senator represents 
his state and a Representative his district. These are influenced 
by local interests. But the President is the representative, the 
spokesman, the Chief Executive of the nation. Upon him pre- 
eminently rests the responsibility for upholding national stand- 
ards. | 

The Presidency became the chief instrument of democratic 
progress. It became the most respected organ of the will of 
the voters. “Under the party system it has become the chief 
agency for the execution of the popular will.” * 

The party provided the all-embracing, nation-wide organiza- 
tion to elect the President and furnish him with the support 
whereby party policies could be put into operation. 

7. These separations, checks and divisions of power are now 
110A. B. Hart, Actual Government, p. 86. 

VHS Ford sope cit: p.. 283; 


12 A. N. Holcombe (Harvard), The Political Parties of Today, p. 316. 
13 Macy and Gannaway, Comparative Free Government, p. 35. 


618 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


regarded as one of the chief explanations for the rise and estab- 
lishment of the party system of the United States, The very 
structure of the government made party government inevitable. 

The party became the agency whereby the disconnected parts 
of government could be brought into cooperation and whereby 
a policy could be made a fact both in legislation and administra- 
tion. It became the all-inclusive organization through which both 
the expression and the execution of the public will could be ef- 
fected and both national and state power could be coordinated and 
harmonized. 

The party became the organizing and directing force of gov- 
ernment. If a constitutional majority of the people, or a group 
able to wield a majority, wished to put into operation certain gov- 
ernmental principles involving the various branches and divisions 
of government the party became the sole agency which could 
unify all those parts. It organized and united the voters, and 
organization and union in a disciplined party became the means 
by which principles could be advanced and policies put into opera- 
tion or, on the other hand, whereby powerful selfish interests 
could accomplish their special purposes. Whether the object 
was noble or selfish, lofty or despicable, the party method be- 
came the one by which to control the government. The party 
system was evolved as the result of the American genius for 
organization and the capacity to achieve the end in view. 

8. One factor in the development of the party system was the 
growth of democratic spirit in the eatly part of the nineteenth 
century. Suffrage was extended and there was a rapid increase 


of the electorate. The Constitution, designed to prevent direct 


majority rule, had made no provision for transmitting the will of 
the people to the government. Some means had to be devised to 
enable the public will to function, The party was the agency 
evolved for that purpose. It organized the voters and became 
the instrumentality for surmounting the obstacles to popular rule 
contained in the Constitution. 


The large increase in the number of voters made organization — 


more needful. It became much more expensive to reach the 
voters. Independent candidacies held out less and less prospects 
for success. Even under the more advanced direct primary laws 
pre-primary slates were made up in which groups of candidates 
for different offices on the ticket would pool their interests in the 
campaign. As a consequence of the difficulty of reaching and 
influencing the increasing number of voters the party machine 
obtained a still stronger hold. And an interest like the liquor 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 619 


power, which could provide large funds for political expenses 
and also control a large number of mobile voters, acquired a tre- 
mendous hold on the party machine. 

9. A factor which has strengthened the party system is the 
multiplicity of offices. There are so many offices to be filled by 
popular election that even the more intelligent citizens are not able 
to make selections and are almost bewildered as to knowing for 
whom to vote. Ordinarily, even under direct primaries, only 
a small fraction of the voters go to the polls. In practice the 
selection of the candidates is usually made by a small group of 
professional politicians who compose the machine. Unless cor- 
ruption becomes too flagrant, or unless there is some exceptional 
issue at stake, the voters ordinarily ratify the nominations made 
by the party machine. The party’s control of patronage, both 
the elective offices and the many appointive positions, gives it 
tremendous power. It has almost a monopoly of the avenues of 
political preferment. This compels the office-seekers and office- 
holders to work in harmony with the organization. Under 
normal political conditions the office-holder must subordinate his 
personal political principles to the interest of the party. The 
office-holder holds his office not as an individual but as a mem- 
ber of the party. He owes his position to his party and must 
cooperate with his party if he would continue in office. His 
party’s interest dominates his official acts. 

1o. A final factor was the transformation of the Constitution 
through the subordination of the electoral method of selecting 
the President and the adoption of the party convention system of 
nomination. The membership of the national nominating con- 
vention is made up chiefly of politicians active in the party service 
with no location of responsibility, other than the collective re- 
sponsibility of a party about to face an election. In the national 
convention individuals are subordinated and the assumed interest 
of the national party becomes overtowering. The platform is 
drafted and nominations made with a view to the competition 
for the favor of those groups of voters deemed necessary to 
insure a majority in the requisite states. Especially are party 
policies formed with a view to carrying those states regarded 
as pivotal. 

Before closing this discussion, a reflection should be made re- 
garding the failure of the “good man” theory. This theory was 
advocated by certain anti-liquor groups in opposition to the party 
method. But long before, a similar theory had been advocated 
by some of the members of the Constitutional Convention of 


620 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


1787. They thought the constitutional system they were devising 
would prevent the rise of parties. They thought that the various 
states would select their best men for presidential electors who in 
turn would vote for the best qualified men in the nation for 
President and Vice-President. Similarly, the legislatures of the 
states would send their best men without regard to party to the 
United States Senate. But observe the outcome. The electoral 
college, instead of picking the best man, was reduced to a mere 
registering machine. The Senators chosen were usually out- 
standing partisans. The “good man” theory collapsed completely. | 
The selection of the President became the supreme function of - 
party organization which extended to the remotest locality, and | 
we have a system of party government which is all-pervading. _ 

The party thus became in certain vital respects superior to and 
supplantive of the Constitution itself. It surmounted the checks — 
and balances, separation of powers, the bicameral principle, and 
the division between the nation and the states; and supplanted the — 
purpose of the Fathers by nominating and electing the President 
and Senators. It rendered a study of the Constitution alone as a 
basis of government stale and unprofitable unless it is studied in 
connection with the party system. In control of the government 
the party in power can carry the Constitution into effect or refuse 
to enforce it as, for example, the refusal to carry into effect the 
reduction of representation provision of the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment. 

As this is written the present issue of superlative concern to” 
the moral welfare and the Constitutional integrity of the nation is 
whether the liquor power, even though outlawed, shall regain | 
the but partially relinquished hold it had on the major parties 
and wield those parties to distort and nullify the Eighteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution. 

Finally, after making an analysis of the governmental system | 
there should be no doubt that our government is a government 
by political party. The party enfolds, combines and unifies the 
otherwise disconnected parts of government in order to obtain 
power to govern the country. This is the basis of the saying, 
“we elect an individual to office but a party to power.” 

Former President Hadley of Yale University has said: 






The peculiar thing about American parties is that the passage of 
certain legislative measures is not the chief purpose of their exist- 
ence. It isamere incident. The important purpose of an American 
party is to govern the country."+ 


144A, T. Hadley, Standards of Public Morality, p. 125. 





THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 621 


PROHIBITION AND PARTY GOVERNMENT 


Having made (a) an analysis of prohibition and (vb) an 
analysis of the pertinent features of our governmental system, 
we now come to combine and correlate the elements in the 
problem. 

Among the outstanding facts to be considered are the follow- 
ing: 

T. Prohibition requires legislation and continuity of legisla- 
_tive support. It is the party which organizes and controls the 
legislative department. 

2. Prohibition requires continuous administration. It is the 
party which administers the government. 

3. Prohibition needs faithful and loyal officials to carry it 
into effect. By making prohibition a party principle loyalty to 
party involves loyalty to prohibition. 

4. Enforcing officials need the backing of a supporting con- 
stituency. A party organization committed to prohibition as a 
party principle provides continuous political support. 

5. Prohibition involves the cooperation of the different 
branches of government. The party system has been evolved to 

embrace them all. 

_ 6 Prohibition needs the cooperation of national, state and 
local governments. The party encompasses all. While its pri- 
mary objective is national it would be of tremendous benefit to 
the nation to have a principle of righteousness and good gov- 
ernment permeating politics and government from top to bottom. 
Uniformity of principle, national, state and local, would sub- 
stitute hope for the despair which follows many local efforts at 
reform. Woodrow Wilson in his book, Constitutional Govern- 
| ment in the United States, pointed out that non-partisan local 
political efforts always in the long run fail. “Local parties can- 
not be one thing for one purpose and another for another with- 
| out losing form and discipline altogether and becoming hopelessly 
Patid:' 7° 

__ A party which tries to stand for one policy in one part of the 
country and the opposite policy in another cannot give efficient 
| administration nationally, particularly if the alienation of one 
_ section will endanger its continuance in power. 

A national party with a uniform policy, national, state and 
local, would give unity of purpose and efficiency of administra- 
tion. Without party support there is disunity, conflict, inaction, 


15 Page 208. 


622 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 






lack of enforcement, disrespect for the law and disrepute for 
prohibition. 

7. A union in a national prohibition party, an alignment which 
would bring together the supporters of prohibition, such as the 
Prohibition party sought, would overcome and overmaster the 
opposition to prohibition. It would do so, first, because a majority 
of the people have long opposed the liquor traffic and need only to 
be organized and unified, and, second, the benefits accruing from 
successful administration would win increasing numbers to the 
support of prohibition thus insuring its establishment as a perma- 
nent policy. | 

The need of a union was so much emphasized in the philosophy — 
of the Prohibition party that it deserves a digression and the 
devotion of considerable space to its consideration.?® 

One of the fundamental reasons for a political party is to 
secure a union to establish certain principles in government. The 
classical definition of a political party, and the one endorsed by — 
the Prohibitionists in the platform of 1900, was that by Edmund 
Burke which emphasized union for the sake of principle. Burke 
said: “A political party is a body of men united for the purpose 
of promoting by their joint endeavors the public interest upon 
some principle upon which they are all agreed.’ This definition — 
is quoted by many writers on parties as being the best definition, 
although most regard it as too ideal for the actual current situa- 
tion and in applying it to a description of contemporary parties 
modify it to include also the promotion of an interest or interests 
other than, or contrary to, the public interest. Some writers in-_ 
clude as a basis of union not only a principle or principles but also 
traditions, tendencies and predispositions.*" | 

Nevertheless Burke’s definition remains as the ideal of a politi- 
cal party and characterizes, especially, the minor parties and some 
of the major parties at such periods as 1860 and 1896 when there 
were outstanding issues at stake. 

The Prohibition party view of the reason for being of parties 
was stated by John Bascom, for years President of the University 
of Wisconsin and later Professor of Political Science at Williams 
College, one of the ablest thinkers in the history of the prohibition _ 
movement. The following is a brief extract: 


Parties are inevitable and subserve most important purposes. — 


e 16 Edward: J. Wheeler, Prohibition: The Principle, the Policy and the Party, 
preniit. 

17 C. E, Merriam, The American Party System, p. 382; R. C. Brooks, Political 
Parties and Electoral Problems, p. 5; J. A. Woodburn, Political Parties and 
Party Problems, p. 2099. 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 623 


They express and combine the popular thought in its diverse forms 
and make the opinions of the people socially and politically pro- 
ductive. No new ideas of any magnitude touching the state can 
grow into power without the intervention of a party. The party 
embodies the idea and gives it supremacy.’® 


The union must be in a national political party to obtain control 
of the government. All sorts of lesser unions have been tried. 
Among these were: 

A. Movements to wield a balance of power, but these divided 
allegiance between a non-party organization and the party or- 
ganization. The latter was superior because it was an organ of 
government. Besides, the drys could not compete with the wets 
in the use of this method because the latter were so much more 
controllable and bossible. Furthermore, the wets would use cor- 


_ rupt methods which the drys would not deign to use. The balance 


of power method can hardly be successful on a measure when 


there is a strong opposing force using the same tactics. ‘The 
two sides may neutralize each other but the side benefiting by 
governmental inaction wins. 


B. A union of the dry voters in the primaries of one or both 


of the dominant parties has often been attempted and sometimes 





with success so far as localities and states are concerned. But 
to be effective for a national measure it should be nation-wide. 

The fact that the parties are not nationally committed causes 
politicians, even some personally favorable to prohibition, to re- 
frain from acting in a manner which might endanger the party 
in pivotal states where the wet vote is regarded as essential to 
party success. 

This was illustrated in the Republican national conventions 


of both 1920 and 1924. The former already has been referred 
to.t® At the latter convention held in Cleveland, the United 


Committee for Dry Platforms, representing twenty-four national 
and state, civic and church organizations, with a constituency of 
many millions of people, and representatives of other strong or- 
ganizations, were accorded a hearing by the Platform Commit- 


tee. They asked that the Republican party declare in its platform 


in favor of the maintenance and enforcement of the policy of na- 
tion-wide prohibition, which for five years had been in the Con- 


stitution of the nation. One of the most prominent of the Re- 


publican leaders reported in private conversation that word had 


been brought that the leader of the party, the President in the 


18 The Pioneer, January, 1885, p. 36. 
19 Infra, p. 458. 










624 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


White House, had expressed himself as being favorable to a 
general law enforcement plank but that he was opposed to the 
word prohibition being mentioned. His will was carried out, 
there being no aggressive advocacy by lesser party leaders con- 
trary to the wishes of the President. 

So long as the national party refuses to support prohibition as 
a principle, so long as it seeks to retain pro-liquor votes in 
pivotal states, local victories are inadequate and, furthermore, 
the policy of the national parties makes even these more difficult 
because the issue is often not clear enough to elicit the support 
of the voters in the opposite party. There cannot be a real union, 
therefore, until there is a national one in a national party. It is 
its national policy which determines the character of a party. The 
primary is unadapted to change party policy. Its function is to 
subserve the party, not to change it. It changes local candidates 
but has never reformed the policy or composition of a national 
party. 

C. The third type of union is a union at particular elections 
upon a specific issue under the referendum. | 

Prohibition in the United States has generally been adopted 
by the use of the referendum. ‘Twenty-five of the thirty-three 
states which adopted state prohibition prior to national prohibi- 
tion adopted it by popular vote and the adoption of national 
constitutional prohibition was by what might be loosely termed a 
form of referendum in that it was submitted to a vote of the 
representatives of the people in the various state legislatures, 
those representatives in the main undoubtedly reflecting what they 
knew to be the sentiments of their constituents. Also, in several 
states state enforcement acts have been adopted by the use of the 
referendum and, if we take the latest vote, no state which has 
voted on an enforcement measure has defeated it. 

Although the use of the referendum is latgely responsible for 
the adoption of the prohibitory laws, dependence upon it is also 
one of the main reasons why enforcement has not been as satis- 
factory as it had been hoped. The referendum is not govern- 
ment. It provides for the expression of the public will but not 
for its execution. The expression of the public will is only a 
fractional part of the sphere of government. As has been pointed 
out heretofore, government includes both the expression of the 
public will and the execution of that will.?° | 

Our system of government does not render effective the mere 
expression of popular will by such means as the referendum, 


20 See Goodnow, Politics and Administration. 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 625 


direct votes or even constitutional amendments, especially on 
those questions which require the continued, positive exercise of 
governmental authority after the expression has been taken. 
Particularly is this the case when the popular will is opposed by 
an element which has no respect for law, statutory or constitu- 
tional. Upon a question which has such active, intense, organized 
and powerful political opposition as prohibition, to attempt to 
secure results under the referendum alone is to neglect the most 
essential branch of government, the administrative. 

The party method is the only one yet devised for making pos- 
sible the unified control of all departments of government. 

Referenda and amendment submissions, unless party support is 
added, leave in the hands of the enemy the means of thwarting 
the desires of the people. 

On the other hand, the party method summons all the powers 
of government to execute the people’s will. 

From this discussion of the various proposals for union it 
must be concluded that the other methods are inadequate and that 
the party method is the only one designed and adapted to marshal 
all the powers of government to overcome the liquor power. 

Returning from this extended discussion regarding a union 
and having reached the conclusion that the balance of power, the 
direct primary and the referendum methods are inadequate as 
governmental solutions, the next point in the series discussing the 
patty as a necessary agency to obtain enforced prohibition is: 

8. The party’s superlative function is to elect the President of 
the United States, the head of the administration, the leader of 
his party, the leader of the nation. It is the conviction of many 
that prohibition can never reach complete success until there is a 
Chief Executive in the White House devoted to it as a matter 
of principle. 

Furthermore, so long as the parties are so organized that they 
adapt their appeal for votes with reference to obtaining wet votes 
in pivotal states, so long as party leaders are intimidated by the 
noisome propaganda of Constitution nullifiers and are afraid to 
take a position in favor of the principle of the Constitution as 
against those nullifiers, so long as good citizens continue to vote 
for men and parties without social vision and moral power but 
are satisfied with the old type of politics, so long shall we fail 
to have those parties place a man of conviction on this question in 
the White House. 

A party is needed to elect a President of the United States 


626 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


committed to prohibition as a principle. The powers of the 
President need to be arrayed on the side of prohibition. 


Powers of the President 


Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution says: “The executive 
power shall be vested in a President of the United States of Amer- 
ica.” ‘The content of the term executive power is as yet not fully 
fathomed. ‘Taken in connection with the obligation of his oath 
of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the 
United States” and the further constitutional obligation that “he 
shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” his power 
and responsibility with respect to a provision in the Constitution 
are exceedingly great. 

Analyzing some of his powers: 

a. It is his duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed. 

6. He has the appointing power, subject to confirmation of 
the more important officers by the Senate. This involves the 
responsibility that officers be appointed who will enforce the law. 
Even when by custom Senators, Representatives or party offi- 
cials name the appointees he can require a standard to which the 
proposed appointees must attain if they are to receive the ap- 
pointments. This power of appointment in the many branches of 
the administration is exceedingly vital. One or two strategic 
positions filled by those opposed to prohibition can cause its nulli- 
fication. The appointment and maintenance in office as head of 
the department responsible for the enforcement of prohibition 
of a man who for many years had been financially interested in 
the making of whisky tended to pervert enforcement from top to 
bottom. 

c. He can safeguard the courts by appointing the right type of 
judges. 

d. He has the power of removal and through this can control 
the acts of any subordinate in his administration. 

e. He can eliminate friction between departments or officials 
and put an end to the attempted shifting of responsibility for 
enforcement. 

f. He has power, exercised through the Department of Justice, 
over the initiation, prosecution or discontinuance of judicial pro- 
ceedings, civil and criminal, a very dangerous power if used in 
the wrong way to prevent prosecutions. 

g. ‘Another dangerous power if wrongfully used by a Presi- 
dent opposed to prohibition is the pardoning power. 

h, He possesses large ordinance power, that is, the authority 





THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 627 


to supplement statutes by rules and regulations in matters of de- 
tail. This power to issue regulations is very far-reaching and 
sometimes is of very great strategic importance. Success or fail- 
ure in the operation of a law may result from the quality of the 
regulations issued. For example, regulations so drafted as to 
fail to give officers authority to investigate breweries outside of 
office hours may defeat the purpose of the whole constitutional 
amendment prohibiting the manufacture for beverage purposes. 
The powers of regulation exercised by the Commissioner of In- 
ternal Revenue or by the Secretary of the Treasury, for each of 
whom the President is responsible, may mean success or defeat 
for Constitutional prohibition. 

1. The direction of foreign affairs rests with the President. A 
firm policy toward other countries regarding the countenancing 
of smuggling under their flags or by their nationals would tend 
to diminish smuggling. 

j. He is Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy and if 
the need were acute enough he could employ the armed forces 
in such a manner as to deter lawbreaking. In case of open re- 
sistance he may use the armed forces of the United States. 
The use of the army and navy for law enforcement has been 
suggested but Prohibitionists generally do not favor the use of 
the military arm for civil purposes except in extreme emergency: 
The better way is to reform the civil administration. 

k. He has the veto power, which is equal to within one vote 
of two-thirds of both houses of Congress, as a check on legislation 
he does not favor. 

l. One of his greatest powers is his message power by which 
he can speak not only to Congress but also he can set forth to 
the country, in a respected and authoritative manner, a program 
of action to be undertaken for the welfare of the nation. 

m. He exerts great power as the leader of his party by which 
he is able to elicit the support of the other branches of govern- 
ment and also to shape to a large degree his party’s policies. 

n. still further, he is the leader of the nation. He is the 
embodiment of the nation’s purpose. The personal character and 
moral power, or lack of it, of the Chief Executive not only give 
tone and tendency to the administration but they influence the 
national standards and the nation’s moral objectives. 


9. This discussion of prohibition and party government leads 
us to the unescapable conclusion that the party is the logical and 
necessary agency for marshaling all the many and varied powers 


628 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


of government and for bringing them to bear to overcome the 
liquor power, suppress the liquor traffic and obtain the inestimable 
benefits of enforced prohibition. 

10. Furthermore, the great questions in the history of this 
country which have been settled have been championed and 
settled by a political party. Party championship and the party 
method have the tremendous weight of experience and prec- 
edent in settling the great questions in the history of our country. 
The questions of the extension of slavery, the tariff, the money 
question and many others were made party questions before a 
settled policy was adopted. 

Even woman suffrage, which had been vigorously agitated for 
over half a century, did not reach its fruition until after it had 
been championed by political parties. For years it met with the 
opposition of the party machines and their allies, the liquor 
interests, and suffered defeat. When championed by the large 
political parties it was carried through to early success. 

The woman suffrage question involved only a fraction of gov- 
ernment, the legislative branch, as compared with prohibition 
which involves all departments of government. Notwithstanding 
that prohibition is far more completely a party question, there was 
a decided contrast between the party support which the Woman 
Suffrage Amendment received in its later stages and the entire 
absence of party support which the Prohibition Amendment has 
received, 

The record is as follows: 

Party agencies of the major parties exerting themselves in the 
adoption of national constitutional prohibition: None. The only 
possible exception, and that applied to war prohibition and not to 
constitutional prohibition, was in April, 1917, when the caucus of 
Democratic members of the House of Representatives endorsed 
war prohibition as part of their war program. This action, how- 
ever, was soon rescinded as the result of superior party authority, 
the President giving directions that only legislation initiated by 
the administration should be considered.”* 

Party agencies exerting themselves in the adoption of woman 
suffrage included: 

The 1916 platforms of both parties favored woman suffrage, 
although merely as a state measure. 

In February, 1918, the national committees of both parties 
passed resolutions favoring the submission of the National 


21 Philadelphia North American, July 3, 1917, quoted in Congressional Record 
of July 6, 1917, p. 4734. 








THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 629 


Woman Suffrage Amendment. Also the Congressional com- 
mittees of both parties and many state conventions in 1918 passed 
similar resolutions. 

The National Chairman of each party went to Washington to 
work for it. 

On September 30, 1918, President Wilson delivered an ad- 
dress to the Senate in its behalf. 

In December, 1918, the President included in his address to 
Congress an earnest appeal to pass the Woman Suffrage Amend- 
ment. 

A third time, on May 21, 1919, the President in an address 
to Congress recommended the passage of the Woman Suffrage 
Amendment. 

After submission and before ratification it received the support 
of the platforms of all parties, the committal of all candidates 
for President, and was subject to special resolutions by the Na- 
tional Executive Committees of both parties. 

In the endeavor to obtain the thirty-sixth state both candidates | 
for President exerted their influence. Both National Committees 
sent representatives to Tennessee. The President telegraphed the 
Governor of Tennessee urging him to call a special session of the 
Legislature, saying it would be a real service to the party and to 
the nation. Besides, he directed the Department of Justice to 
render an opinion to the Governor of Tennessee concerning the 
application of the Supreme Court decision in the Hawke case, 
just decided following the argument of Governor Hanly, to the 
constitution of Tennessee in order that the Governor might be 
convinced regarding the right of his state to ratify before the 
election of a new Legislature. 

Thus almost every party agency supported woman suffrage 
while none of them supported prohibition.” 

When Prohibitionists advocated the need of a party for pro- 
hibition they were simply following historical precedent with 
regard to the great, important, outstanding, controversial ques- 
tions of American political history. 


DEE eVARTY AS YoL GiimAN DA LIQUOR | PORE DIGS 


There have now been analyzed (a) the content of prohibition 
as a governmental measure, (0) those features of our govern- 
mental system which are most applicable to the situation, and also 
(c) these two groups of factors have been correlated to show 
that a political party is needed to bring the powers of government 


22 For details, see Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics. 


630 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


to bear to settle the prohibition question. The next step (d) is 
briefly to analyze our party system in order to see how liquor 
maintains its political power, and also to determine the ability 
of the major parties, as now organized, to deal satisfactorily 
with this question, in particular whether they are capable of 
transmitting the will of the people on the prohibition question to 
the government in such a manner as to make this public will 
effective. 

The aspects of our constitutional and political system, most of 
which have been discussed, chiefly involved are: 

The large number of voters; the large number of offices to be 
filled; dual national party organizations, which tend to be perma- 
nent, but which are also sectional; the state electoral method of 
electing the President; and the national convention system of 
nominating him. 

Amplifying these five aspects: 

1. ‘he large number of voters and the large number of offices 
to be filled require elaborate and strong political organizations to 
look after the voters, keep them in line, provide for registration, 
get out the vote and attend to the thousand and one details of 
politics. | 

2. These organizations, the political parties, tend to become 
permanent. After having continued for years on the basis of 
certain principles, achievements, attitudes and traditions it is 
difficult for an old party to champion a new issue. Especially is 
it difficult to take a position on a controversial issue because sup- 
port of such an issue involves a new test of allegiance, a change 
in the party’s composition or basis of organization, and because 
there is danger of alienating a requisite fraction of the party 
which is opposed to the new principle. So the party organization 
is given to exaggeration of the achievements, traditions and cus- 
tomary issues by which it attained its existing cohesion. 

The usual policy of a party machine is to avoid or, if compelled, 
to make compromise on an issue on which there is serious differ- 
ence of opinion. Of contemporary writers describing parties, 
one says: “Party never commits itself to any new undertaking 
until it has to.” Another says: “The existing major parties are 
unserviceable in dealing with the issues of the times.” Another 
considers them as “brokers” of political wares, and others say 
they exist mainly for obtaining the offices.?* 


23H. J. Ford, The Rise and Growth of American Politics; A. N. Holcombe, 
The Parties of Today; A. L. Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government ; 
A. C. McLaughlin, The Courts, the Constitution and Parties; C, E. Merriam, 
The American Party System, p. 218. 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 631 


The system of permanent party organizations prevents the 
parties from being representative of the real sentiment of the 
country respecting any particular question. 

The major parties practically have ceased to be agencies for 
the transmission of the public will to the government on any 
concrete subject. A policy adopted does not necessarily represent 
the public will, but that will as deflected and modified by the 
interests of the party organization. 

Still worse, as Professor Merriam has pointed out: “In some 
instances the older parties, instead of making easier the formula- 
tion and decision of great issues, serve the function of suppressing 
them or of diverting attention from them.’’ Heretofore in this 
volume mention has been made of the efforts of the major parties 
to suppress the prohibition movement both in the decade of the 
fifties and in the eighties. 

3. The parties are national parties. Organization demands 
are so great that it is not practicable to have national parties and 
also state parties existing side by side. | 

But the national parties must have local branches everywhere 
with local incentives to encourage and spur the workers. 

The chief purpose of a party is to elect the President and con- 
trol the national government. Whatever alienates votes from 
the national party in any pivotal area hurts the party in the nation. 

4. Although the party is. national, there is no direct national 
vote and success is achieved in national elections by winning 
pluralities in the states and districts. In electing the President 
the states vote as units. The objective of the party managers is 
to obtain pluralities in certain states possessing electoral votes 
aggregating a majority of the electoral college. 

5. The fact that some states vote continuously for one party 
and are regarded as certain and that other states oscillate be- 
tween the parties makes the latter group of states the great 
strategic objectives of the party managers. These are called close 
states, or doubtful or pivotal states. 

6. The close states include several of the larger states con- 
taining populous cities with debauched citizens where the liquor 
traffic has been most thoroughly entrenched and where its domi- 
nation of politics has been most complete. 

These populous close states may be swung from one party to 
the other by a comparatively small mobile balance of power vote 
such as the liquor interests still can control. 

On the other hand, most of the dryer states are counted as 
certain states, certain to go for their customary party election 


632 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


after election and the party managers do not need to worry about 
them. 

The thirty states which have given popular majorities for prohi- 
bition together with the states where the legislatures enacted state 
prohibition laws, but where there has been no popular vote, thirty- 
seven states in all, have over two-thirds of the electoral votes 
of the country, 355 out of 531.7 Their action in adopting pro- 
hibition undoubtedly represents the sentiment of the voters on this 
question. 

But the difficulty is that the 355 electoral votes are divided 
between the Republicans and the Democrats. A number are in 
the solid South and are regarded as certainly Democratic no 
matter what kind of a candidate the Democratic party nominates. 
Others are in the states which are regarded as unalterably Re- 
publican. If from the 355 electoral votes we subtract the votes 
of the states which are unvaryingly Democratic, there would not 
be enough electoral votes left in the thirty-seven states to give 
success to the Republicans if they should come out for prohibi- 
tion. Vice versa, if we subtract the votes of the states un- 
varyingly Republican, there would not be enough electoral votes 
left to give success to the Democrats. So as a result of having 
sectional parties and because so many states vote continuously for 
one party, neither major party can carry enough dry states to win. 
Neither party considers itself safe without depending upon states 
where the liquor power still has influence. 

While not all of the eleven states which have not expressed 
themselves for prohibition are manipulatable by the wets, enough 
of them are so regarded as to intimidate the party managers. 

Thus, despite the fact that states which have expressed them- 
selves in favor of prohibition cast more than two-thirds of the 
votes in the electoral college, the outlaw liquor power wields a 
sufficient balance of power in certain pivotal states to intimidate 
the national parties in elections to the Presidency of the United 
States. ; 

Although locally more than three-fourths of the states have 
given majorities of the people or of their representatives for pro- 
hibition, nationally the parties continue to be under the domi- 
nation of the liquor power. 

It should be added, however, that it is not merely some of the 
eleven states which have not voted for prohibition that the wets 
seek to dominate politically. Some of the thirty-seven states 
where the people or their representatives have voted for pro- 

24 See infra, Chapter XXIII. 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 633 


hibition are so divided between the parties that the wets seek to 
wield a balance of power in a number of those also. 

That the effect of this national objective of the party to carry 
close states is not mere theory is illustrated by an occurrence in 
the 1924 presidential campaign related to the writer by the 
Congressman concerned. 

A Congressman, who was dry, had received some information 
regarding the earlier career of the presidential candidate of the 
opposite party which showed that for a considerable period he had 
been the attorney for a notorious brewery and further that his 
legislative record had been reprehensible in several respects, par- 
ticularly on moral issues. These facts, although discussed some- 
what in the state of which the candidate had been Governor, 
were not generally known over the country and the Congressman 
thought that if the people knew the record of the opposing candi- 
date many votes would be changed to the presidential candidate 
of his own party. 

This Congressman took the material and evidence to the na-. 
tional campaign committee of his own party telling them that if 
the people knew the record of the opposing candidate many votes 
would be turned to the presidential candidate of the Congress- 
man’s party. But the committee declined to use the material 
on the ground that it might alienate wet votes from their party 
in certain wet states of the East. 

The objection made by the representatives of the campaign 
committee against using the material was not at all that they 
questioned its accuracy, but simply that they feared to alienate wet 
votes in pivotal states. 

Between a convictionless leader of the party on one side and a 
‘cowardly party management on the other, one is reminded of 
Eugene W. Chafin’s striking declaration that “no evil can live 
in this country unless it has two political parties to support it.” *° 

Another proposition stated by Mr. Chafin which is applicable 
was: “No political party can be any better than the evil it serves 
to carry the next election.” ?° And when the evil the major 
parties serve is an evil outlawed by the fundamental law of the 
land, how unspeakably depraved those parties have become. 

This fear of the parties to drive away liquor votes in close states 
has been evidenced many times. It is inherent in a party which 
is willing to subserve the liquor interests by refusing to take a 
position against them no matter what its professions may be re- 


25 E. W. Chafin, The Master Method of the Great Reform, p. 130. 
26 Jbid., p. 135. 


634 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


garding other questions. This was illustrated by even the Pro- 
gressive party in 1915. In that year when some of the Progres- 
sives still hoped to continue their organization in the 1916 cam- 
paign one of the prominent Progressives of the strongly pro- 
hibition state of Kansas gave out the statement that it would not 
do for the Propressives” to adopt a prohibition plank in 1916 
because it would prevent them from carrying some of the wet 
states of the East.?* 

7, Another factor which has helped to prevent both major 
parties from supporting prohibition is the fact that for over half 
a century the vote of the organized liquor traffic has been re- 
garded as an indispensable element in the party machine, espe- 
cially in the populous centers of close states and neither party is 
yet willing to alienate it. On the contrary, as in the presidential 

election of 1920, both parties make bids for that vote. 

8. The method of nomihating the President tends to per- 
petuate the old political régime. The delegates to the national 
conventions are made up chiefly of the politician class, those long 
associated with the liquor power. These have the chief deter- 
mination in selecting the nominees for President and Vice- 
President. 

In only about one-third of the states are there direct primaries 
for the selection of delegates to the national conventions and in 
these the primaries are generally controlled by the political ma- 
chines. For example, in New York in 1920 the delegates to the 
national conventions were elected in a direct primary. Of the 
eighty-eight delegates to the Republican national convention 
fifty-four either held public office or were party officials, such as 
state committeemen or district leaders. 

In the Democratic primaries, in thirty-nine of the forty-three 
Congressional districts, there was no opportunity offered the 
voters to make a choice of delegates. All of those previously 
selected as delegates by an unofficial state convention were elected 
in the primaries.” 

g. Thus with both major parties seeking the liquor vote in 
close states; with their basis of organization, or composition, 
practically unchanged by prohibition, which was obtained outside 
of parties; with the liquor vote continuing as a desired element in 
the unregenerated political machines; and with the President 
nominated by the old type of politicians, it becomes practically 


27 See Vindicator, April 7, 1915. 
28 Infra, Chapter XXIV. 
29 Boots, “The Presidential Primary,” in the National Municipal Review, Septem- 
ber, 1920. 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 635 


impossible for either major party to properly support the prin- 
ciple of prohibition. So long as a party continues to be or- 
ganized along the old lines of cleavage and regards the liquor 
vote as essential to its retention in, or accession to, power, so 
long will administration by such a party be unsatisfactory. 

Many years ago John Russell, the Father of the Prohibition 
Party, put this situation in the form of a syllogism as follows: 


1. Where members of any political party, in any considerable 
numbers, are radically and irreconcilably divided on a question, it 
therefore becomes impossible for that party to give positive and 
satisfactory legislation on such question. 

2. But members of all other political parties, in considerable 
numbers, are radically and irreconcilably divided on the question of 
prohibiting the liquor traffic. 

3. Therefore, it is impossible for either of such parties to give 
satisfactory prohibition of the liquor traffic. 


This was true in 1869, in 1884, and continues to be true in 
1926. The situation is improved in that not as large a proportion — 
of the voters are opposed to prohibition as formerly and those 
who now are opposing it are contending against the Constitution, 
but so long as there is an opposing, irreconcilable faction suffi+ 
ciently numerous or aggressive to elicit the inactivity or sub- 
servience of the parties, John Russell’s syllogism applies.°° 

10. The consequences of the failure to have the party in power 
committed to prohibition have been demonstrated in the extremely 
unsatisfactory administration which has been experienced under 
the three Presidents who have been in power from the time 
of the adoption of the Amendment down to the present, some of 
the facts of which have been given in Chapter XXV. 

The powers of the President have been but little utilized, up to 
the present time, for making the Eighteenth Amendment effec- 
tive. Reviewing some of the powers discussed earlier in this 
chapter, under the appointing power, the higher officers of the 
government have been appointed without reference as to whether 
they have any conviction in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment. 
On the contrary, members of the Cabinet, United States judges, 
United States district attorneys, and other high officials having 
to deal with the administration of this amendment have been ap- 
pointed whose records have been diametrically opposed to pro- 
hibition. 

The blunt fact is that up to the present time loyalty to the 


30 For a presentation of the Prohibition party philosophy in 1884, see address 
by John Russell in Hand Book of Prohibition, 1885, PP. 27-34. 


636 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Kighteenth Amendment is not at all regarded by the dominant 
party as a test in the appointment of even those officers most 
responsible for its enforcement. Many of the men appointed to 
high authority in prohibition enforcement have decidedly wet 
records, or at best there has been, with a few exceptions, an 
absence of dry records. 

The appointment of federal prohibition officers came to be 
almost a national scandal. These were appointed under the spoils 
system under which Senators, Representatives, chairmen of state 
or local party committees or politicians of influence recommended 
the appointees. Many of those making the recommendations 
were wet or obligated to the liquor vote so that in at least one- 
third of the states the leading officers charged with enforcement 
have been reputed to be wet. Besides, a great many of the sub- 
ordinate prohibition agents appointed through these channels 
were notoriously wet. 

The President has the power and the responsibility, even when 
according to custom he permits local party officials to recommend 
appointments, to require that the proposed appointees shall meas- 
ure up to a certain standard of loyalty to and interest in the law. 
President Roosevelt required an announced standard in ap- 
pointees to offices filled in a similar manner. But so far as 
known no President thus far has required such a standard relative 
to prohibition. On the other hand, there seems to have been a 
desire not to appoint those with a known conviction in favor of 
prohibition. 

Not only has the power of appointment not been utilized but 
the power of removal has been used more than once, perhaps 
not by the President, but by authority within the Treasury De- 
partment, to remove prohibition officers who had been aggressive 
in the enforcement of the law. 

The President has direct responsibility for and control over the 
budget. Nevertheless, in December, 1924, the proposed budget 
recommended a cut in the appropriation for the Prohibition Unit 
for the fiscal year 1926, proposing a reduction of more than a 
million dollars from the inadequate sum appropriated for the 
fiscal year 1925. Fortunately Congress did not accept all of the 
recommended decrease and appropriated $9,670,560 as com- 
pared with $10,012,330 the year before. In December, 1925, 
again the proposed budget recommended another decrease for the 
Prohibition Unit. 

Relative to the power of the President through his subordinates 
to issue regulations, Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania, who was 


THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 637 


making a splendid fight for enforcement and who had fought the 
political machine in his state, pointed out that the regulations 
favored the outlaw breweries. The regulations also have been 
regarded as rendering easy the diversion of millions of gallons 
of denatured alcohol to beverage purposes. 

In the President’s messages the subject of law enforcement has 
been mentioned briefly but President Coolidge used his power 
as party leader against the mentioning of prohibition in the na- 
tional platform of his party. 

From the standpoint of his position as feral of the nation, 
thus far the chief activity of the present President has been 
to give rather mild exhortations for law observance by individuals 
and for enforcement by state and local agencies. Some have 
thought that the emphasis upon other jurisdictions enforcing the 
law sounded strangely similar to the efforts to shift responsibility 
which have been characteristic of the politicians for many years. 

Lack of space prevents a more detailed recital of the sickening 
record by which presidential administrations uncommitted to this 
principle of the Constitution have permitted a holy cause to be 
sacrificed, 

11. The failure of the national parties to commit themselves 
to national prohibition has made state and local enforcement 
more difficult. 

To endeavor to commit the state or local branches of the party 
organization to a principle to which the national party is not 
committed is to impose locally a condition of party membership 
which is not required by the national party. It involves a different 
party composition and tends to imperil the party in national elec- 
tions. It interferes with party solidarity. This causes the pro- 
hibition question to be regarded by the politicians as a disturbing 
question and tends to make them chary of it. It leads to in- 
activity which is equivalent to non-enforcement. 

Thus the lack of commitment to national prohibition by the 
national parties made enforcement more difficult everywhere and 
helped the outlaw liquor trafic in its program of nullification. 

12. The unwillingness of the major parties to alienate the wet 
vote, their continued catering to that vote and their suscepti- 
bility to wet propaganda has not only greatly increased the laxity 
in the enforcement of law with the consequent failure to achieve 
the proper degree of the benefits of prohibition but it has had a 
tremendous reflex influence in encouraging and increasing the 
wet propaganda. 

By a vigorous propaganda against prohibition the liquor inter- 


638 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


ests have been able not only to stimulate hope for some modifica- 
tion of the National Prohibition Act in the future, but by in- 
timidating the parties they have been able to block immediate en- 
forcement by rendering officials inactive. This in turn has helped 
along the wet propaganda that prohibition is a failure. The 
impression that prohibition is a failure has helped the wet propa- 
ganda and increased the number of votes which the liquor power 
is able to influence, which in turn has given it a greater leverage 
in intimidating parties. Thus propaganda, wet votes, subservient 
parties, lax enforcement, disappointing results and more wet 
propaganda have kept going around in a vicious circle. 

The important problem in law enforcement has not been the 
ordinary bootlegger. With proper enforcement of law he soon 
would be regarded as an ordinary criminal. 

The chief obstacle has been not even the continuous wet propa- 
ganda but the fact that political parties by yielding to that propa- 
ganda have paralyzed the arm of the government and have fed 
the flames of lawlessness and nullification. 

13. So long as alignments continue as at present and the 
parties continue to be composed as they are, the parties are likely 
to continue to be influenced by wet propaganda, and wet pressure 
exerted on the margin of plurality, and liquor will continue to 
wield its political power. 

14. The conclusion of this study is that the major party 
organizations as at present aligned do not constitute adequate 
agencies for the transmission to the government of the will of the 
people upon this question. On the contrary they provide an or- 
ganization in control of the government which by its very com- 
position is rendered largely indifferent, if not inimical, to the 
will of the people as expressed both through the amending 
process and through the referendum. This is an intolerable situa- 
tion. If allowed to continue it means a constant conflict be- 
tween the forces advocating law and order and constitutional 
government on the one side and the party controlling the gov- 
ernment on the other. 

As an organized party in possession of the government is 
stronger than an unorganized sentiment, however active, there 
is danger of the great cause of prohibition going down in the 
uneven contest unless there is a realignment to unite the forces 
of prohibition to obtain control of the government and make the 
administration of the government correspond with the real senti- 
ment of the people and with the Constitution. 

The forces which rolled up the majorities for prohibition in the 


, 
. 
| 
) 





THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 639 


referendum elections and which secured the adoption of the 
Eighteenth Amendment through the difficult amending process 
should follow up their work in order that the government shall 
be administered by a party not dependent upon the votes of law- 
breakers for success, a party which will refuse to be intimidated 
by the progaganda of nullificationists. There is needed a party 
so organized that it will have a united constituency committed to 
the continuous policy of making prohibition regnant in adminis- 
tration as well as in legislation. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PROHIBITION PARTY 


Having made an analysis of prohibition as a governmental 
measure and of our American constitutional and political system 
as it relates to party government, having shown the need of a 
party for prohibition, having discussed the present composition 
and characteristics of the parties in relation to liquor’s continuing 
political power, and having shown that the major parties under 
their existing composition and attitude are not satisfactory 
agencies to achieve the objectives of the Great Reform, we are 
led to the conclusion that in order to mobilize the resources of 
government to overcome the liquor power there needs to be a 
realignment, a union of the voters in a political party committed 
to prohibition as a fundamental party principle. 

This conclusion underlay the political philosophy of the Pro- 
hibition party through the years from 1869 down, and the added 
experience with prohibition in the Constitution, but without the 
support of the party in power, merely gives added weight to that | 
philosophy. 

A new alignment and a union in a political party of voters 
favoring prohibition is needed. 

1. ‘To secure the transmission of the public will on this ques- 
tion to government in such a manner as to make that will effec- 
tive in administration. 

2. To make the organization of the government correspond 
with the public will as already expressed both through the most 
authoritative method of expressing the sovereign will of the na- 
tion—that is, the process of amending the Constitution—and as 
expressed through numerous popular elections. 

3. To put an end to the despicable condition whereby the 
party in power depends upon an outlaw traffic, a nullificationist 
group, for its margin of plurality in pivotal states and therefore 
for its governmental power. 


640 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


4. To place in power a party which represents a combination 
of the better citizens and the law upholding elements of the 
nation, a union of citizens devoted to the better tomorrow, a 
union to place the friends of humanity side by side against the 
common foe. 

5. Because, as Lincoln said, “Our cause must be entrusted to 
and conducted by its undoubted friends, by those whose hands are 
free, whose hearts are in the work and who care for results.” 

6. That we may have public officials with an undivided al- 
legiance, who are not bound in political partnership with nulli- 
fiers of the Constitution. 

7. Yo establish law and order and enhance respect for gov- 
ernment. 

8. That there may be a sincere, straightforward, conviction- 
dominated, efficient administration of the laws of the land to the 
end that the greatest possible benefits of prohibition may be 
achieved. | 

g. To throw off the yoke of the liquor triumvirate and obtain 
a new freedom both for government and for the masses who have 
been slaves to alcohol. 

to. There is needed a political revolution to break up the 
old organizations and realign the voters in harmony with the real 
sentiment of the people on the most important issue of the age. 

Such a revolution occurred in 1856-1860 when the Whig party 
was discarded because of its inability to take a position on the 
vital issue of the period. The existing parties were overcome 
notwithstanding that at that time the Democratic and the Whig 
parties were regarded as the “accepted institutions of the 
country.” 

The political revolution of that period was the precedent which 
the leaders of the Prohibition party hoped would be followed on 
this question. If the political nullification of the Eighteenth 
Amendment continues, the combination of loyalty to a moral 
provision of the Constitution and the holy aspiration of the na- 
tion to be free from alcohol and the alcohol power should bring 
on the greatest political revolution since Lincoln. 

Prohibition was, and continues to be, a supreme issue not 
merely because of the magnitude of the individual and social evils 
of the hquor traffic, immeasurable as they were and as insepa- 
rable from alcohol as they are. It was not merely because of 
its economic importance and the colossal direct and indirect wastes 
of the traffic, incalculable as they were. But the chief reason for 
its supremacy as an issue was, and is, due to its relations to 
politics and government. 





THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM 641 


No issue more vitally concerns the fundamental governmental 
purposes of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No meas- 
ure more fully embraces all departments of government, legisla- 
tive, executive and judicial, and all branches, national, state and 
local. None more needs a continuity of governmental policy until 
assuredly established. 

The issue today involves the capacity of government to enforce 
its laws. It involves whether the Constitution shall be respected 
and carried into effect, or whether it shall be nullified. 

It involves whether the liquor power shall be overcome, or 
whether it shall overcome the nation. 

It involves whether the liquor traffic shall be suppressed, or 
whether the overwhelming share of it in the form of beer and 
wine shall return to alcoholize and degenerate great masses of the 
people. 

It involves whether the earnings of the masses shall continue 
in channels which now make legitimate business prosperous, or 
whether they shall be diverted to the coffers of the liquor barons. 

It involves whether politics shall be purified, or whether politics 
shall be further degraded. It involves whether government shall 
be utilized for enhancing the welfare of humanity, or whether it 
shall be trailed in the mire of corruption. 

It involves whether the American nation shall succeed in the 
greatest national moral undertaking of modern times, or whether 
it shall suffer ignominious defeat by the most brutalizing and 
relentless organized enemy of the human race. 

In far-reaching influence upon public welfare, in comprehen- 
siveness of governmental operation and in its relationships to the 
moral progress of America and of the world, this issue tran- 
scends any other issue of our time or any group of issues upon 
which there is serious party diversity. 

Prohibition as viewed by the Prohibitionists with its relation 
to the solution of many other social and economic problems, 
with its economic outreaches, with its emphasis on the supremacy 
of moral issues, with its view of government as an agency for 
the promotion of the public good, provides an issue, a platform, 
a tendency and a new spirit in politics which was and continues 
to be a far more than adequate basis for a political party. 

The philosophy of the Prohibition party in relation to pro- 
hibition and the American governmental system was and con- 
tinues to be correct, sound and right. 


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Appendix 
LEADERS OF PROHIBITION PARTY 


A large volume would be needed to pay adequate tribute to 
the many splendid men and women who gave themselves to the 
prohibition cause. In preparing this book it was planned to 
devote at least a long chapter to outstanding personalities of the 
Prohibition party. But the limits of space were such that it was 
possible only to record the names of the official leaders. These, 
it is believed, will be of permanent historical value. 

The list below includes all of the Prohibition candidates 
for Governor in every state from 1869 to 1925. It includes the 
name of every member of the Prohibition National Committee 
since 1869, with the possible exception of a very few who served 
only a fraction of a term. As a rule, the members of the Na- 
tional Committee were outstanding leaders in their respective 
states. 

Also it includes practically all of the State Chairmen who 
served any length of time since 1887 and some before. 


Alabama. ‘The candidates for Governor were: John T. Tanner, 
°86: S. L. Russell, °90; W. P. Witherspoon, ’98; W. B. Crumpton, 
OO PVD Gay, 702: 

The members of the National Committee were: John T. Tanner, 
"82-84: Z. A. Parker, ’84-88; J. R. Hoffman, ’84-’88; Tope 
Whitten, 8896; L. C. Coulson, ’88-’92; J. C. Orr, ’92-’96; J. Bi 
Albritton, ’12"16; W. B. Smith, ’12~16; Dr. Isaac W. Higgs, *16- 
20; A. F. Lokey, ’16-’28; W. A. Jones, 24-28. | 

The State Chairmen were: John T. Tanner, ’87; W. B. Wither- 
spoon, ’00-’02; W. D. Gay, ’o2-’04; J. B. Albritton, ’04-"12; A. F. 
Lokey, *15-’24. 

Arizona. The National Committeemen were: Eugene W. Chafin, 
’12’20; Frank J. Sibley, ’t2-’16; John Wix Thomas, ’16-’28. 

The State Chairman ever since Arizona became a state has been 
John Wix Thomas. 3 

Arkansas. The candidates for Governor were: J. W. Miller, ’94, 
’96; George Hazen Kimball, ’02; J. E. Williams, ’04; and John D. 
Adams, ’o6. | 

The members of the National Committee were: Thomas J. 


644 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Rogers, ’80-’82 and ’88-’92; J. L. Palmer, *82-’92; W. P. Grace, ’82- 
88; George C. Christian, ’92-’00; Mrs. Bernie Babcock, ’oo-’04; 
H. Brady, ’o4-’12; John M. Parker, ’o4-’o8 and ’12-’20; Henry 
Hatton, ’08-’12; George Hazen Kimball, ’12-’20, 

The State Chairmen were: W. D. Matthews, ’88-’90; John M. 
Moore, ’90-’92; W. W. Wallace, ’92-’96; Alexander McKnight, ’96- 
00; Martin H. Henry, ’oo-’04; G. H. Kimball, ’o8. 

California. The candidates for Governor were: R. H. McDonald, 
82; Joel Russell, ’86; John Bidwell, ’oo; Henry French, ’94; J. E. 
McComas, ’98; Theodore D. Kanouse, 02; James H. Blanchard, 
06; S. P. Meads, ’10; Clinton P. Moore, 14; William D. Stephens 
(Fusion), 718. 

The members of the National Committee were: James F. Stewart, 
69; J. W. Webb, ’82-’84 and ’96-’00; A. D. Wood, ’82-’84; George 
Babcock, ’84~-’88; Mrs. Emily Pitt Stevens, 84-88; T. B. Stewart, 
88-92; Jesse Yarnell, ’88-’96; Chauncey H. Dunn, ’92-’96; Rev. 
J. A. B, Wilson, ’96-’00; Miss Gabrella T. Stickney, ’oo-’04; Fred 
F. Wheeler, ’04-’08; A. B. Taynton, ’04-’08; T. K. Beard, ’08-’12; 
Wiley J. Phillips, ’08-’12; F. W. Emerson, "12-16; George F. 
Thompson, *12-’16; H. Clay Needham, ’16-’20; Mrs. Annie E. K. 
Bidwell, ’16-’20; H. A. Johnson, ’20-’28; Miss Marie C. Brehm, ’20- 
’24; Dr. M. Len Hutchins, ’24-’28. 

The State Chairmen were: M. C. Winchester, ’82; Captain A. D. 
Wood, ’84; J. A. Fairbanks, ’87; George Morris, ’88-’90; Henry 
French, ’90-’92; J. M. Glass, ’92-’96; Frank E. Coulter, *96——_; J. 
W. Webb, ’99——; H. Clay Needham, ’00-’02; C. L. Meracle, ’o2- 
03; A. B. Taynton, ’03-’06; E. Leonardson, ’06-’09; J. H. Woerten- 
dyke, ’o9-’12; W. I. Hull, ’12; Charles R. Burger, *13-’16; Harley 
H. Gill, "16——; H. Clay Needham, ’18 ‘ 

Colorado. The candidates for Governor were: W. H. Fishback, 
86; William C. Stover, ’88; John A. Ellett, ’92; George Richard- 
son, ‘94; W. A. Marsh, ’96; Robert H. Rhodes, ’98; Prof. AP gine 
Wylie, 00; O. A. Reinhardt, ’o2; Herbert A. M. Wilson, ’o4,; Dr. 
F. C. Chamberlain, ’06; H. L. Murray, (08; P. A. -Ricej/10% Jab 
Ketchum, ’12; Dr. S. H. Pollock, ’14. 

The members of the National Committee were: John A. Ellett, 
"84-88; I. J. Keator, ’92-’96; H. E. Singletary, ’92-’96; John Hipp, 
96-08 and ’16-’24; J. M. Scouller, ’00-08; Mrs. M. E. Craise, ’0o- 
04; H. L. Murray, ’o8-’12; O. A. Reinhardt, ’08-’20 and ’24-"28 ; 
J. H. Ketchum, ’12-’16; Edgar Wilkinson, ’20-’28, 

The State Chairmen were: A. S. Pettit, ’84-’87 and "89-91; J. B. 
Willsea, ’87; A. W. Brazee, ’88; L. J. Templin, ’91-’94; John Hipp, 
’94-’99, ’04-’07 and 714; J. N. Scouller, ’99-’02; H. A. N. Wilson, 
02-'03; J. R. Wylie, 04; O. A. Reinhardt, ’07-’10; H. L. Murray, 
‘Io-"12; J. H. Ketchum, 712-14, 

Connecticut. The candidates for Governor were: Francis Gil- 
lette, 72; Henry D. Smith, ’73, ’74, 75; Joseph Cummings, 776; 
Jesse G. Baldwin, ’78; George P. Rogers, ’80-’82; Elisha H. Palmer, 





APPENDIX 645 


84; Samuel B. Forbes, ’86; Hiram N. Camp, ’88; Phineas M. 
Augur, ’90; Edwin P. Auhur, ’92; Dewitt C. Pond, ’94; Edward 
Manchester, ’96; Charles E. Steele, ’98-’00; Robert N. Stanley, ’02; 
Oliver G. Beard, ’04; Matthew E. O’Brien, ’06-’08; Emil L. G. 
Hohenthal, ’10; Buell B. Bassette, 712; Duane N. Griffin, ’14; George 
Whitefield Simonson, ’16; J. Newton Lackey, 718; Rollin V. Tyler, 
°20 (Democrat endorsed). 

The members of the National Committee were: William Goodell, 
69; E. H. Palmer, ’80-’84; E. B. Lyon, ’80-’82; George P. Rogers, 
’82-’92; A. A. Morehouse, ’84-’92; Allen B. Lincoln, ’92-’96; Henry 
B. Brown, ’92-’96; F. C. Bradley, ’96-’00; J. N. Stanley, ’96-’00; 
Charles E. Steele, ’00-’04; F. G. Platt, ’00-’28; E. L. G. Hohenthal, 
’o4-’08 and ’16-’28; William N. Taft, ’o8-’11; Jason L. Randall, 
"TI-’10. 

The State Chairmen were: Henry B. Brown, ’69-’76; Thomas 
H. L. Talcott, ’78; J. A. Lewis, Nathan Babcock, John B. Smith, 
’86-’90; Allen B. Lincoln, ’90-’94; Louis A. Babcock, ’95; Henry B. 
Brown, ’96-’02; E. L. G. Hohenthal, ’o2. 

District of Columbia. Members of the National Committee were: 
O. K. Harris, 69; Hosea B. Moulton, ’92-’00; Samuel H. Walker, 
’92-'96; J. R. Maloney, ’96-’00 and ’12-’16; Matthew E. O’Brien, 
"12-16. 

Delaware. The candidates for Governor were: James F. Hof- 
ficker, ’86; William T. Kellum, ’90; Thomas J. Perry, 94; Daniel 
Green, ’96; R. M. Cooper, ’00; John R. Price, ’04; John Heyd, ’12; 
John G. Townsend (Fusion), ’16. 

The National Comitteemen were: W. N. Brown, ’88-’92; J. J. 
Boyce, ’88-’92; C. H. Register, ’92-’96; J. H. Jerrell, ’96-’00; 
Aloysius Green, ’96-’00; Ashton R. Tatum, ’oo-’08; George W. 
Todd, ’oo-’06 ; Lewis W. Brosius, ’12-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: Richard M. Cooper, ’87-’90-’12; C. 
H. Register, ’88-’90; L. W. Brosius, ’12. 

Florida. The candidates for Governor were: Arthur C. Jackson, 
’96; J. W. Bigham, ’12; Sidney J. Catts, 716. The last named was 
elected on the Prohibition ticket. 

The members of the National Committee were: Richard Morgan, 
"88-92; S. H. Cummings, ’88-’92; T. A. Duckworth, ’92-’96; W. E. 
Alexander, ’96-’00; J. R. Finch, ’96-’00; A. L. Izler, ’o4-’08; 
Francis Trueblood, ’04-’12; John P. Coffin, ’08-’28; C. B. Wetherell, 
12-16; Mrs. John P. Coffin, 716-’28. 

The State Chairmen were: Richard J. Morgan, °87-’88; J. 
McQueen, ’89; A. W. Biddell, 96; Dr. A. Izler, ’02-’06; John P. 
Coffin, ’10-’25. 

Georgia. The candidates for Governor were: J. B. Culpepper, 
’92; Seaborn Wright, ’96. 

The members of the National Committee were: J. O. Perkins, 
’82-’84; Samuel W. Small, ’88-’96; A. A. Murphy, ’88-’92; Frank 
J. Sibley, ’92-’00; W. S. Witham, ’08-’12; George Gordon, ’08-’12, 


646 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The State Chairmen were: A. A. Murphy, °88-'905* Dre Ji: 
Perkins, 90-12; Col. R. S. Cheves, ’04-’06; W. S. Witham, ’1o-’15- 
16; George Gordon, ’11-’12; W. W. Nanney, ’12; Lamar S. Payne, 
20, 

Idaho. The candidates for Governor were: Joseph A. Clark, 92; 
Henry C. McFarland, ’94; Moses F. Fowler, ’96; Miss Mary C. 
Johnson, ’98; W. J. Boone, ’00; Albert C. Gibson, ’02; E. R. Head- 
ley, ‘04; Silas Luttrell, ’06; William C. Stalker, °08; Emmett D. 
Nichols, 12; E. R. Headley, ’14. 

The members of the National Committee were: W. Thomas 
Smith, ’92-’96; E. B. Sutton, ’oo-’04; H. A. Lee, ’o0-’08; Silas S. 
Gray, ’04-’08; J. M. Ingersoll, ’16; Lowell M. Coate, ’16-’20; Mrs. 
Nina Howard, ’20——. 

The State Chairmen were: H. A. Lee, ’96-’02 and ’o4-’06; Edwin 
R. Headley, ’02-’04; Aaron M. Bray, ’07-’10; Silas M. Luttrell, 
ai ; Harry Hayes, ’12-’14; Davis Errett, ’14-’16; John Tucker, 
"16. 

Illinois, ‘The candidates for Governor were: James F. Simpson, 
"76; J. B. Hobbs, ’84; David H. Harts, 88; Robert R. Link, ’92; 
George W. Gere, ’96; Judge V. V. Barnes, ’00; Robert H. Patton, 
04; Dan R. Sheen, ’o8; Edwin R. Worrell, 712; John R. Golden, 
"16; James H. Woertendyke, ’20. 

The members of the National Committee were: C. Jaebiulavee. 
J. W. Haggard, ’75-’80; Mrs. Fannie W. McCormack, ’76-’80; R. 
W. Nelson, ’82-’84; J. G. Irwin, ’82-’84; A. J. Jutkins, ’84-’88; J. A. 
Van Vleet, ’84-’88; J. A. Hobbs, °88-’06; J. G. Evans, 88-92; D. H. 
Harts, ’92-’96; C. M. Whipple, ’96-’00; Oliver W. Stewart, ’96-’12; 
Hale Johnson, ’o0-’02; Frank S. Regan, ’04-’08; Alonzo FE. Wilson, 
’08-’16; Robert H. Patton, "12-’24; Miss Marie C. Brehm, ’16-’20; 
Mrs. Alonzo E. Wilson, ’20-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: FE. S. Wells, ’84-’86; John W. Hart, 
86-88; Levi C. Pitner, ’88; Henry W. Austin, °88-’92; George W. 
Gere, ’92-’96; Oliver W. Stewart, ’96-'99; Hale Johnson, ’99-’02; 
Alonzo E. Wilson, ’02-’12; Robert H. Patton, ’12-’24, 

Indiana. The candidates for Governor were: Aaron Worth, ’92; 
L. M. Crist, ’96; Charles Eckhart, 00; Felix T. McWhirter, 04; 
Sumner W. Haynes, ’o8; W. H. Hickman, ’12; Alfred L. Moudy, 
"16; C. M. Kroft, ’20; B. L. Allen, ’24. 

The members of the National Committee were: D. R. Pershing, 
69; Sylvester Johnson, ’88-’92; S. J. North, ’88-’92; John Ratliff, 
'92-'96; Mrs. Helen M. Gouger, ’92-’06; Miss Mary E. Hadley, 
‘96-’00; Felix T. McWhirter, 96-12; Charles Eckhart, ’04-"12; F, 
W. Lough, ’12-’16; J. Raymond Schmidt, 12-’22; Sumner W. 
Haynes, ’16-’24; Edward W. Clark, ’22-’24; H. S. Bonsib, ’24~28 : 
Dr. Homer J. Hall, ’24-’28, 

The State Chairmen were: John Ratliff, ’86-’90; Jesse T. 
Hutchins, ’90; Dr. Homer J. Hall, ’90-’93, ’97-’o2, ‘07; Felix Ti 
McWhirter, ’93-’94 and ’96; J. M. Dunlap, ’95-’96; L. C. Master, 





APPENDIX 647 


’o2: Charles E. Newlin, ’02-’07; F. W. Lough, ’07-'13; J. Raymond 
Schmidt, 713-718; I. N. Grisso, ’18; Charles M. Fillmore, ’20-'22; 
B. L. Allen, ’24. 

Towa. The candidates for Governor were: J. H. Lozier, ’75; Col. 
Elias Jessup, ’77; D. R. Dungan, ’79; James Michlewait, ’85; V. G. 
Farnham, ’87; Malcolm Smith, ’89; Isaac T. Gibson, 91; Bennett 
Mitchell, ’93; Frank Bacon, ’95; 5. P. Leland, ’97; M. W. Atwood, 
’99; A. U. Coates, ’o1 ; John F. Hanson, ’03; L. S. Coffin, 706; K. W. 
Brown, ’08; A. McEachron, ’10; C. Durant Jones, 712; Malcolm 
Smith, ’14; O. D. Ellett, 716; Madison L. Christian, 18; A. Mc- 
Eachron, ’24. 

The members of the National Committee were: H. Green, 69; 
D. R. Dungan, ’80-84; J. B. Morgan, ’80-’84; James Michlewaitt, 
’88-’92; J. V. Farnham, *88-’92; R. M. Dihel, ’92-’96; S. A. Gilley, 
’92~96; J. A. Harvey, ’96-’00; W. L. Ferris, ’96-’00; Malcolm 
Smith, ’00-’08; A. U. Coates, ’04-'08 ; O. D. Ellett, ’08-’16; K. W. 
Brown, ’08-’16; A. McEachron, ’16-’24 ; Fred J. Stevenson, ’16-'20; 
Mrs. Ida B. Wise Smith, ’20-’24. 


The State Chairmen were: E. W. Brady, ’87; Malcolm Smith, 


’90; Isaac T. Gibson, ’91; S. A. Gilley, 91; O. D. Ellett, ’98-’o1 and 
702-04; J. H. Campbell, ’o1; W. D. Elwell, ’04-’08; John B. Ham- 
mond, ’o8-’10; C. Durant Jones, *10-’12; Prof Gise.) jordans) ia: 
R. H. Williams, ’13-’16; Miss Minette Murphy, ’16; A. McEach- 
ron, ’16-’24. 

Kansas. The candidates for Governor were: W. K. Marshall, 
’87; John Paulson, ’76; C. H. Branscombe, ’86; J. D. Botkin, ’88; 
A. M. Richardson, ’90; I. O. Pickering, 92 and ’94; Horace Hurley, 
96; W. A. Pefter, ’98; Frank Holsinger, 700; F. W. Emerson, ’02; 
James Kerr, ’04; J. Bs Cook, 706; A. DL. Hope, ’o8; William Cady, 
10; Earle R. DeLay, ’12; Silas WiBond!*14yDr.. Ay Ro Ross: sro: 

The members of the National Committee were: Prof. VU. 
Thomas, ’69; John Paulson, ’76-’80; Jacob Bambough, ’76-’80; J. M. 
Beyers, ’84-’88; Delos W alker, ’84-’88; A. M. Richardson, ’88-’92 ; 
Mrs. C. H. St. John, ’88-’92; John P. St. John, ’g2-’96; M. V. B. 
Bennett, ’92~’96; T. D. Talmadge, ’oo-’06; J. B. Garton, ’00-’04 ; 
Earle R. DeLay, ’04-"16; J. N. Woods, ’98-’20; O. A. Herbert, *16- 
’09; Dr. E. S. Grisel, ’20-'24; Mrs. Nellie Skepper, ’20-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: A. M. Richardson, ’87-’90; J. M. 
Monroe, ’90-——; G. W. Wharton, ’95 ; Mont Williams, ’96-’00; B. J. 
Williams, ’01; Earle R. DeLay, ’02-’10; Edwin C. Hadley, ’10-’12; 
John A. Shields, ’12; J. W. Tanner, 713; Lyman G. Cosand, ’14; 
©. A. Herbert, 14-17; J. Hayden Kershner, ’18. 

Kentucky. The candidates for Governor were: Fontaine T. Fox, 
Jr., 87; Josiah Harris, ’91; T. B. Demaree, ’95; O. T. Walace, ’99; 
John D. White, ’00; T. B. Demaree, us Ievaleeicnetty 07 +7). 1). 
Redd metal dow hickett,<15. 

The members of the National Committee were: DD. Demaree, 
7684 and ’00-’20; James L. Henderson, ’76-’80; A. J. Jutkins, ’84- 


al 


648 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


°88; Col. R. S. Cheves, °84-’88; G. W. Ronald, ’88-’92; William 
Matthews, ’88-’92; J. W. Sawyer, ’92-’96; G. W. Young, ’92-’96; 
Col. George W. Bain, ’96-’o0; J. H. Moore, ’96-’00; Mrs. Frances 
FE. Beauchamp, ’oo-’04 and 08-23; J. D. Smith, ’04-’08; Adam W. 
Carpenter, ’20-’24; L. L. Pickett, 24-28, 

The State Chairmen were: Fontaine T. Fox, Jr., 87; William 
Matthews, ’88; W. E. Hibler, 89; Josiah Harris, 90; T. B. Demaree, 
99; J. D. Smith, ’oo, ’04, ’05; Huram W. Davis, ’04 and 07 SHAE. 
Morrisonse O7 lasts. Pickett, ’08; E. Deets Pickett, ’o9-’11; Mrs. 
Frances E. Beauchamp, 71 I-15 and ’18-’23; T. B. Demaree, ’16, 

Louisiana, The only candidate for Governor was Captain John 
M. Pharr, ’96. 

The members of the National Committee were: Captain John M. 
Pharr, ’96-’00; E. E. Israel, 04-12; Prof. Walter Miller, ’o4-’12, 

The State Chairmen were: Alfred W. Wagner, ’02-’07; and E. E, 
Israel, ’07-’15. 

Mame. The candidates for Governor were: N . G. Hickborn, ’69; 
William T. Eustis, ’82 and 84; Aaron Clark, ’86 and 90; Volney B. 
Cushing, 88; Timothy B. Hussey, ’92; Ira G. Hersey, ’94, since 
1916 a Congressman; Dr. A. S. Ladd, ’98; Grant Rogers, ’00; James 
Perrigo, ’02; Nathan F, Woodbury, ’o4; Henry Woodward, 06; 
James H. Ames, ’o8 and IOs Werks Sterling, 12; F. A, Shephard, 
‘14; Linus Seely, ’16, 

The members of the National Committee were: Josiah Nye, ’69; 
Nathan F. Woodbury, ’82-’16; W. T. Eustis, ’82-’92; Volney B. 
Cushing,’92-’00 and ’o4-’08; A. H. Clary, ’0o-’04 ; Lyman B. Merritt, 
‘08-12; James H. Ames, "12-16; W. I, Sterling, ’20-’24; Fred A. 
Shephard, ’20-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: John S. White, ’87; N. F, Woodbury, 
88, ’90, ’96; Wilder W. Perry, ’90; Volney B. Cushing, ’96; 
James Perrigo, ’oo-’o2 and 97, “15, 24; Arthur J. Dunton, ’02-’04; 
W.-T Sterling, 715-124. 

Maryland. The candidates for Governor were: Summerfield Bald- 
win, 87; Edwin Higgins, 91; Joshua Levering, ’95; James Swann, 
95; William Gisriel, ’03; J. W. Hrizzell, 707 s)t i Dulaney, ’11; 
George R. Gorsuch, ’15, 

The members of the National Committee were: John Lloyd 
Thomas, ’84-’88: E. B. Newman, ’84-’86; William Daniel, ’88-’92 ; 
Walter F. Harmon, 88-92; Edward Higgins, ’92-’00; Levi S. 
Melson, ’92-’04; Joshua Levering, ’00-’04; Finley C. Hendrickson, 
’04-’28 ; John N. Parker, ’04-’08 ; George R. Gorsuch, ’o8-’20, 

The State Chairmen were: William Daniel, ’87-’89; W. L. 
McCleary, ’89; W. H. Silk, ’90; Edward Higgins, ’91-’92; T. Mel- 
ville Prentiss, ’96; John N. Parker, ’00-’02; Oliver Helmstreet, ’o2- 
04; William Gisriel, ’04-’06; Finley C. Hendrickson, ’06-’08 ; George 
R. Gorsuch, ’08-’10; Charles R. Wood, 450-6 

Massachusetts. The candidates for Governor were: Wendell 
Phillips, ’70; Robert C. Pitman, ’71; John J. Baker, "75 and 76; 


ee ee ee 


tem: 


APPENDIX 649 


Robert C. Pitman, ’77; A. A. Miner, ’78; D. C. Eddy, ’79; Charles 
Almy, ’80, ’81, ’82, °83; Julius H. Seelye, 84; Thomas J. Lothrop, 
85 and ’86; William H. Earle, ’87 and ’88; John Blackmer, 89 and 
90; Charles E. Kimball, ’91; Wolcott Hamlin, ’92; Louis Albert 
Banks, 93; Alfred W. Richardson, 794; Edward Kendall, ’95; Allen 
Coffin, ’96; John Bascom, ’97; Samuel B. Shapleigh, ’98; Albert B. 
Coates, ’99; John M. Fisher, ’00; John B. Lewis, ’o1; William H. 
Partridge, ’02; Oliver W. Cobb, ’03 and ’04; Willard O. Wylie, ’o5 ; 
John B. Moran (Fusion), ’06; Hervey S. Cowell, ’07; Willard O. 
Wylie, ’08; John A. Nichols, ’09 and ’10; Frank N. Rand, ’11 and 
12; Alfred H. Evans, ’13 and ’14; William Shaw, 715; Chester R. 
Lawrence, ’16 and *17; Charles B. Ernst, ’19; John B. Lewis, ’22. 

The members of the National Committee were: Nathan Beal, ’76- 
"80; Rev. G. F. Clark, ’76-’82 and ’84-’88; C. A. Hovey, ’80-’84; 
A. A. Miner, 82-84; Mrs. E. M. H. Richards, ’84-’88; E. H. 
Clapp, ’88-’92; B. F. Sturtevant, ’88-’92; James H. Roberts, ’92-’96; 
Augustus R. Smith, ’92-’96; Frank M. Forbush, ’96-’04; A. W. 
Richardson, ’96-’00; H. S. Morley, ’oo-’08; John B. Lewis, ’o4-’23; 
John M. Fisher, ’08-’16; Daniel A. Poling, ’16-’20; William Shaw, 
"16-24. 

The State Chairmen were: J. M. Fisher, ’87; James H. Roberts, 
"88; M. H. Walker, ’89; A. W. Richardson, ’90; W. H. Partridge, 
*g1-’92; John Blackmer, ’93-’94; Howard A. Gibbs, ’95; Frank M. 
Forbush, 96; A. H. Morrill, ’00-’02; J. B. Lewis, ’04; John A. 
Nicholls, 06; Jonathan S. Lewis, ’07; W. D. Moon, ’07; Willard O. 
Wylie, ’08-’10; Solon W. Bingham, ’11-’12, ’15-’20 and ’23; A. J. 
Orem, 713-’14; William Shaw, ’20. 

Michigan. ‘The candidates for Governor were: Henry Fish, ’70 
and “72; George R. Carpenter, *74; Albert Williams, *76; Watson 
Snyder, 778; Isaac W. McKeever, ’80; D. P. Sagendorph, ’82; David 
P. Preston, 84; Samuel Dickie, ’86; Amherst B. Cheney, ’88; A. H. 
Partridge, ’90; John Russell, ’92; A. M. Todd, ’94; Robert C. Saf- 
ford, ’96; Noah W. Cheever, 98; Prof. F. S. Woodridge, ’00; 
Walter S. Westerman, ’02; J. W. Schackleton, ’04; R. Clark Reed, 
‘Oo y.jonn Wo. Gtay, 703, BredyW, Corbett,.’10;"J7 D.deland, ag: 
Charles N. Eayers, 714; Edwin W. Woodruff, ’16; John S. McColl, 
18; John Y. Johnson, ’20; Beldon C. Hoyt, ’22; John Y. Johnson, 
ed: 
The members of the National Committee were: John Russell, ’69- 
76 and ’80-’92; W. Williams, ’76-’80; Mrs. Adella R. Worden, *76- 
80; I. W. McKeever, ’80-’84; D. P. Sagendorph, ’84-’88; Samuel 
Dickie, ’88-’96 and ’oo-’12; Albert Dodge, ’92-’96; Fred E. Britten, 
’96-’04; Charles P. Russell, ’96-’00; Fred W. Corbett, ’o4-’12; 
Milton G. Wylie, ’12-"16; W. A. Brubaker, ’12-’16; Burton L. 
Rockwood, ’16-’20; John P. Leslie, ’16-’20; Andrew Wood, ’20-’24; 
John F. Easley, ’20-’24; John Y. Johnson, ’24-’28; Frank E. Titus, 
24-28, 

The State Chairmen were: A. D. Powers, ’86-’87; Albert Dodge, 


650 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


’88-’89; James W. Reid, ’90; John Russell, *90-’92; Charles P. 
Russell, ’92-’93 and ’96; Michael J. Fanning, ’94-’95; Fred E. 
Britten, ’98-’02; Fred W. Corbett, ’02-’06; W. A. Taylor, ’07-’08; 
Alfred Lowther, ’08-’10; W. A. Brubaker, ’11-’14; Merritt A. Stitt, 
"15; W. H. D. Fox, 716; Burton L. Lockwood, ’16-’18; Andrew 
Wood, ’18-’21; John Y. Johnson, ’21. 

Minnesota, The candidates for Governor were: Daniel Cobb, ’69; 
Samuel Mayall, ’71 and’73; R. F. Hamilton, ’75; W. W. Satterlee, 
79; I. C. Stearns, ’81; Charles E. Holt, ’83; James E. Child, ’86; 
Hugh Harrison, 88; James P. Pinkham, ’90; William J. Dean, 
’92; Prof. Hans S. Hilleboe, ’94; William J. Dean, ’96; George W. 
Higgins, 98; B. B. Haugan, ’00; Charles Scanlon, ’02; Charles W. 
Dorsett, 04 and ’06; George D. Haggard, ’08; J. F. Heiberg, ’10; 
FE. E. Lobeck, ’12; W. G. Calderwood, ’14; Thomas J. Anderson, 
"16; O. O. Stageberg, ’18. 

The members of the National Committee were: Col. S. R. David- 
son, 69; W. W. Satterlee, ’76-’80 and ’82-’88; J. C. Ervin, ’76-’80; 
Rev. A. Willey, 80-82 ; Rev. M. T. Anderson, ’80-’82; L. Bixby, ’82- 
88; James P. Pinkham, ’88-’96; Hugh Harrison, ’88-’92; W. J. Dean, 
92-04; D. B. Haugan, ’96-’00; J. F. Heiberg, ’00-’04; George W. 
Higgins, ’o4-’12; W. G. Calderwood, ’o4-’24; J. D. Engle, ’12-’16; 
EK. E. Lobeck, ’16-’20; Mrs. Alice P. Taylor, ’20-’24, 

The State Chairmen were: W. W. Satterlee; James P. Pink- 
ham, ’87-’90; George F. Wells, ’90; C. A. Tupper, ’90; George F. 
Wells, ’91; Wesley M. Lawrence, ’92-’94; Charles M. Way, ’94-’96; 
George W. Higgins, ’96-’11 ; W. G. Calderwood, ’11-’14 and 716-18; 
George F. Wells, ’14-’16 and ’20-’23; George D. Haggard, ’17. 

Mississippi. The members of the National Committee were: T. 
A. Williams, 782-84; J. N. O. Watson, ’82-’84; J. B. Gambrell, ’88- 
’92; Dr. J. A. Hackett, ’88-’92; J. McCaskill, ’92-’94; Henry Ware, 
’96-’00; B. F. Howard, ’20-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: Henry Ware, ’88-’94; B. T. Hobbs, ’95- 
798; Dr. T. J. Bailey, ’00-’06; B. F. Howard, ’20-’24. 

Missourt. The candidates for Governor were: John A. Brooks, 
84; J. P. Orr, ’86; Frank N. Lowe, ’88; John Sobieski, ’92; H. P. 
Faris,’'’96;' Charles E. ‘Stokes, ‘oo; Ov). ‘Hill,’’04 7-H M Pein 
08; Charles E. Stokes, ’12; Joseph P. Fontron, 716; H. P. Faris, 
20} 

The members of the National Committee were: John T. Ustick, 
769; M. W. Watson, ’84-’88; A. F. Butts, ’84-’88; W. H. Craig, 
*88-’92; William C. Wilson, ’88-’92; John A. Brooks, ’92-’96; R. T. 
Bond, ’96-’00; C. E. Stokes, ’96-’'12; H. P. Faris, ’oo-’28; J. C. 
Hughes, ’12-’20 and ’24-’28; Mrs. Marie Hughes, ’20-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: John A.,Brooks, 87; A. F. Smith, ’88- 
89; J. M. Baughn, ’90; D. Ward King, ’91; Charles E. Stokes, ’96- 
13; W. H. Dalton, ’13-’16; Julius C. Hughes, ’16-’24. 

Montana. The only candidate for Governor was J. M. Waters, 


’ 


92. 


a 


APPENDIX 651 


The members of the National Committee were: E. M. Gardner, 
’92-’04; T. P. Street, ’00-’04; Mrs. Kate M. Hamilton, ’o8-’16. 

The State Chairmen were: J. M. Waters, ’96-’08; R. R. Crowe, 
‘to8Te ana 415-16; J.°H, Parker; “12-14. 

Nebraska. The candidates for Governor were: Jarvis S. Church, 
Waele, Miller, 84; H. W. Harvey, 86; George’ i. Biglow, 88 ; 
Boia Paine, go; C: E. Bentley;"92; E. Al -Gerard;'’o4; Joel Warner, 
oer. Ve Muir, 798 51? Oy Jones, \*00 ;' Sy I’) Davies; 702 3: Chidries 
W. Swander, 04; Harry T. Sutton, 06; R. R. Teeter, ’08; George 
I. Wright, ’10; Nathan Wilson, ’12 and ’14; J. D. Graves, ’16 and ’20. 

The members of the National Committee were: John B. Finch, 
"82-87; S. W. Little, 82-84; C. F.°S. Templin, ’84-’88; A. G. 
Wolfenbarger, ’88-’92 and ’oo-’12; George Scott, 88-’92; C. E. 
Bentley, ’92-’96; F. B. Wigton, ’92-’96; L. G. Parker, ’oo-’o4; L. O. 
Jones, ’04-’08; B. B. Gilbert, 08-16; Mrs. Frances Beveridge Heald, 
2-70" \0 Pi) Currie, 10-205) J. 'G.phick,’ “16-'207' J. AL Murray, 
’20-’28; G. A. Norlin, ’24-’28. 

The State Chairmen were: C. F. S. Templin, ’87-’88; George 
Scott, 89; C. E. Bentley, ’90; H. W. Hardy, ’91; Joel Warner, ’96; 
Penge Parker, 767;,5..D.’ Pitchie, ‘00-02; C. C. Beveridge,’ ’02-'045 
A. G. Wolfenbarger, ’04; W. Burt Clark, ’05; F. W. Emerson, ’06; 
Wie Clann Go horror 1 Uesey. 07-007, irds, Gilbert, (OG-"16s J 77. 
Murray, ’16-’24. 

New Hampshire. The candidates for Governor were: L. D. Bar- 
rows, ’70; Albert G. Cummings, ’71; John Blackmer, ’72, ’73, ’74; 
Nathaniel White, ’75; A. S. Kendall, ’76, ’77, ’78; George D. George, 
’80; J. M. Fletcher, ’82; Larkin D. Mason, ’84; Joseph Wentworth, 
Bo decear io. Carr, 88>) [2M Fletcher, (o0;"Hdgar’L: Carr, 92; 
Daniel C. Knowles, ’94; John C. Berry, ’96; A. G. Stevens, ’98; 
J. M. Fletcher, ’00; John C. Berry, ’02; David Heald, ’04; Edmund 
B. Tetley, ’06 and ’08; John C. Berry, ’10; Alva H. Morrill, ’12 and 
7A? Ralph’ E. Meras,” 10, 

The members of the National Committee were: O. H. Jasper, ’82; 
J. M. Fletcher, ’84-’96; D. C. Babcock, ’88-’96; Isaac B. Vale, ’96- 
700; H. O. Jackson, ’oo-’04; L. F. Richardson, ’oo-’08; Ray C. 
Durgin, ’o4-’08; A. H. Morrill, ’08-16; J. S. Blanchard, ’08-’12; 
George L. Thompson, ’12-’16; David Boynton, ’16-’20; Ralph E. 
Meras, 716-’24; Alfred B. Simonds, ’20-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: J. M. Fletcher, ’87-’92; H. O. Jackson, 
’96; L. F. Richardson, ’o00-’04 and ’06; Ray C. Durgin, ’o4; A. H. 
Morrill, ’07-’11; Rev. G. L. Thompson, ’11-’16; John C. Berry, ’16. 

New Jersey. The candidates for Governor were: R. Bingham, 
77. S, B. Ransom, ’80; Solomon Parsons, 83; Clinton B. Fisk, 
’86; George LaMonte, ’89; T. J. Kennedy, ’92; Henry W. Wilbur, 
’°95; T. H. Landon, ’98; Joel W. Brown, 701; James Parker, ’04; 
John R. Mason, ’07; Charles F. Repp, ’10; James Gilbert Mason, 
13; Harry S. Baughn, ’16; Charles E. Lane, ’19; Eugene A. Smith, 


eA 


652 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


The members of the National Committee were: S. B. Ransom, 
’69-’82; James S, Littell, 76-80; Dr. T. Edgar Hunt, ’80-’88; 
Solomon Parsons, ’84-’88; W. H. Nicholson, ’88-’08; Cortlandt L. 
Parker, ’88-’92; Robert White, ’92-’00; Joel G. VanCise, 00-712; 
Dr. Grafton E, Day, ’12-’16; Will D. Martin, °12-’28; James Gil- 
bert Mason, ’16-’28. 

The State Chairmen were: Thomas V. Cator, 87; Cortlandt L. 
Parker, ’87-’89; T. W. Burger, ’90; Robert J. S. White, ’92-’96; 
George J. Haven, ’oo-’o4 and ’o7-’10; Dr. Grafton E. Day, ’04-’07; 
Donald MacMillan, ’11-’16; Will D. Martin, ’16-’25,. 

New York, The candidates for Governor were: Myron H. Clark, 
70; C. C. Leigh, ’72; Myron H. Clark, "74; William J. Groo, ’76; 
John W. Mears, ’79; A. A. Hopkins, ’82; H. Clay Bascom, ’85; 
W. Martin Jones, ’88; J. W. Bruce, 91; Francis E. Baldwin, ’94; 
William W. Smith, ’96; John Kline, 98; William T. Wardwell, ’oo; 
John McKee, ’o2; Alfred L. Manierre, 04; Henry M. Randall, ’06; 
George E. Stockwell, ’08; T. Alexander MacN icholl, ’10 and ’12; 
William Sulzer, ’14; C. E. Welch, 716; Charles S. Whitman (Rep.), 
"18; George F. Thompson, ’20; George K. Hinds, ’22; Charles E, 
Manierre, ’26. 

_ The members of the National Committee were: William Hosmer, 

‘693, C., Hei Meady ?7686i0: Gl. CG. Leigh, ’76-’80; Stephen Merritt, 
80-82; J. W. Grosvenor, ’80-’82; Dr. T. J. Bissell, 'O2-'88 nro 
Hazelton, ’82-’84; J. W. Bruce, ’84-’88: H. Clay Bascom, ’80-’96; 
William T. Wardwell, ’88-’08; Fred F. Wheeler, ’96-’00; Francis E. 
Baldwin, ’oo-’04 and ’16-’24; J. H. Durkee, ’o4-’08; George E. 
Stockwell, ’08-’12; C. E. Pitts, ’08-’12; Alexander T. MacNicholl, 
"12-'16; Olin S. Bishop, ’12-’20; Mrs. D. Leigh Colvin, ’20-’28; 
William F. Varney, ’24~-’28. 

The State Chairmen were: Dr. T. J. Bissell, "73; Fred F. Wheeler, 
84-89 ; Francis E. Baldwin, ’89-’93; Dr. Mitchell Downing, ’93-’98; 
J, Hy Durkee, ’98+'07 5 GaE) Pitts, 07-125) 10S) Bishop, 712-19; 
W. H. Burr, ’19-’21; W. E. Moore, ’21 ; John McKee, ’22-’24. 

North Carolina. The candidates for Governor were: J. M. Tem- 
pleton, ’92; James R. Jones, ’06; Henry Sheets, ’oo; J. M. Temple- 
ton, ’04. 

The members of the National Committee were: D. W. C. Benbow, 
’88-'92; Edwin Shaver, °88-’92 and ’oo-’o04; J. A. Stikeleather, ’92- 
96; T. P. Johnson, ’92-’04 and ’o8-’20: N. W. Newby, ’96-’00; J. 
M. Templeton, ’o4. 

The State Chairmen were: D. W. C. Benbow, ’87-’90; J. H. 
Southgate, ’96; Edwin Shaver, 96-07; F. S. Blair, ’13-’16; Thomas 
P. Johnson, ’16-’20, 

North Dakota. The candidates for Governor were: R.. B, Rich 
ardson (Fusion), ’96; Delavan Carlton, ’00; H. H. Aaker, ’o4. 

The members of the National Committee were: E. E. Saunders, 


'92-’96; H. H. Mott, ’92-’00; M. H. Kiff, ’96-’12; J. T. Esterbrook, 


APPENDIX 653 


‘00-04; Theodore E. Ostlund, ’o4-’12; O. Tippam, 116-205) (Oli: 
McCracken, ’16-’20; George Lippman, ’202——. 

The State Chairmen were: M. H. Kiff, ’94-’00; E. A. Taylor, ’96; 
J. L. Sizer, ’01; George A. Flewell, ’04; George Schlosser, 107 ; 
Theodore E. Ostlund, ’10; Frank B. Stevenson, ’12-’16; George 
Lippman, ’20. 

Ohio. The candidates for Governor were: Samuel Scott, 69; 
Gideon T. Stewart, ’71 and 773; Jay Odell, ’75; H. A. Thompson, 
’77~ Gideon T. Stewart, ’79; A. R. Ludlow, 81; Ferdinand Schu- 
macher, ’83; A. B. Leonard, ’85; Morris Sharp, ’87; J. B. Helwig, 
’89; J. J. Ashenhurst, ’91; Gideon T. Macklin, ’93; Seth Ellis, 95; 
J. C. Holiday, ’97; George M. Hammell, ’99; E. J. Pinney, Ors 
N. D. Creamer, 03; Aaron S. Watkins, ’o5; J. B. Martin, ’08; 
H. A. Thompson, ’10; Daniel A. Poling, ’12; J. H. Dickason, 16; 
John A. Henderson, ’20. 

The members of the National Committee were: Gideon T. Stew- 
art, 69 and ’82-’84; H. A. Thompson, ’76-’80; Mrs. Mattie Mc- 
Clellan Brown, ’76-’80, ’84-88, ’92-’96; S. L. Roberts, ’80-’82 ; 
W. G. Hubbard, ’80-’82; Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge, ’82-’84; Jay 
Odell, ’84-’88; B. S. Higley, ’88-’92; J. A. Dickson, ’88-’92; L. B. 
Logan, ’92-’96; John Danner, ’90-’04; Robert Candy, ’oo-’08; H. F. 
MacLane, ’o4-’08; J. B. Martin, 08-11; F. M. McCartney, 08-12; 
Aaron S. Watkins, ’11-’20; Hewson L. Peeke, ’12-’20; Prescott 
Gillilan, ’20-’28; Mrs. Carrie L. Flatter, ’20-’24; Fred W. Barrett, 
24-28. 

The State Chairmen were: B. S. Higley, ’87-’89; R. S. Thompson, 
’90; J. W. Sharp, ’91; L. B. Logan, ’92-’95; E. J. Pinney, olay ON fs ol fe 
Ashenhurst, ’97-’02; George L. Case, ’02 3 LB.) Hawkyivo3 2 aM! 
McCartney, ’04-’07; H. F. MacLane, 08-10; J. T. N. Braithwaite, 
"10; J. W. Henry, ’11; J. Raymond Schmidt, ’12; R. R. Roberts; ’13; 
Elton R. Shaw, ’13-’16; F. W. Lough, 716; Prescott Gillilan, "17-253 
General Walter S. Payne, Hewson L. Peeke and H. F. MacLane 
each served a number of years as Chairman of the State Central 
Committee in the period 1898-1912. 

Oklahoma. The only candidate for Governor was George E. 
Rouch, 710. 

The members of the National Committee were: Charles Brown, 
08-16; J. H. Monroe, ’o8-’12; George E. Rouch, *°12-’16; Ernest 
Allison Smith, ’16-’20; J. A. Brewer, ’16-’20. 

The State Chairmen were: E. S. Stockwell, ’02; Charles Brown, 
04-10 and 715-16; G. E. Rouch, *10-’12; L. W. Sisson, 713; Ernest 
Allison Smith, ’15-’17. 

Oregon. The candidates for Governor were: J. E. Houston, ’86; 
James H. Kennedy, ’94; H. M. Clinton, ’98; A. J. Hunsaker, ’o2; 
I. H. Amos, ’06; A. Eaton, ’10; W. S. U’Ren, *14. 

The members of the National Committee were: J. G. Warner, ’88- 
"92; J. W. Webb, ’88-’92; I: H. Amos, ’92-’00; Mrs. IN Sly Digerts 


654 PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


92-96; E. O. Miller, ’oo-04; W. P. Elmore, ’oo-’12; F. Mc- 
Kercher, ’04-"12; Julius C. Voget, ’12-’16; J. P. Neell, ’12-’24; 
George L. Cleaver, ’16-’20; Miss Grace Amos, ’20-’22. 

The State Chairmen were: W. W. Dimick, ’87; C. W. Brown, 
°88-’91 ; George M. Weister, ’94; I. H. Amos, ’95-’07; J. P. Newell, 
°07, : 

Pennsylvania. The candidates for Governor were: Simeon B. 
Chase, ’72; R. Audley Brown, ’75; Franklin H. Lane, ’78; Alfred 
C. Pettit, 82; Charles S. Wolf, ’86; John D. Gill, ’90; Charles L. 
Hawley, ’94; Silas C. Swallow, ’98 and ’02; Homer L. Castle, ’06; 
Madison F, Larkin, ’10; Matthew S. Stevenson, ’14; E. J. Fithian, 
18; William Repp, ’22; George L. Pennock, ’26. 

The members of the National Committee were: James Black, 
*69-’76, *80-'82, ’84-’88; Arthur Kirk, ’76-’80; J. L. Richardson, 
76-80; James Park, Jr., ’80-’82; A. C. Pettit, 82-’84; I. N. Peirce, 
82-84; William T. Dunn, ’84-’88; W. M. Price, ’88-’92; A. A. 
Stevens, ’88-’12; S. W. Murray, ’92-’96; H. D. Patton, ’96-’00; 
Charles R. Jones, ’00-’08; David B. McCalmont, ’o8-’20; Henry S. 
Gill, °12-’16; B. E. P. Prugh, ’16-’28; Elisha Kent Kane, ’20-’28. 

The State Chairmen were: A. A. Barker, ’83-’86 and ’88; A. A. 
Stevens, 87 and ’89; H. D. Patton, ’90-’96; Charles R. Jones, ’96- 
"05; David B. McCalmont, ’06-’10; Burton L. Lockwood, ’o9-’13; 
B. E. P. Prugh, 713-’25. 

Rhode Island. ‘The candidates for Governor were: R. Hazzard, 
"753 Albert C. Howard, ’76; General.Charles E. VanVandt, ’77, 
"78, °79; Albert C. Howard, ’80; Frank G. Allen, ’81; George H. 
Slade, ’85 and ’86; Thomas H. Peabody, ’87; George W. Gould, ’88; 
John H. Larry, ’90 and ’91; Alexander Gilbert, ’92; Henry B. Met- 
calf, 93 and ’94; Smith Quimby, ’95; Thomas H. Peabody, ’96 and 
97; Edwin A. Lewis, ’98; Joseph A. Peckham, ’99; Henry B. Met- 
calf, 00; William E. Brightman, ’or and ’o2; Frederick T. Jencks, 
703; Henry B. Metcalf, 04; Bernon E. Helme, ’o5 and ’06; Louis E. 
Remington, ’07 and ’08; Willis H. White, ’09; Nathaniel C. Greene, 
"10; Ernest L. Merry, ’11; Willis H. White, ’12; Ernest L. Merry, 
714; Roscoe W. Phillips, ’16. 

The members of the National Committee were: Henry S. Wood- 
worth, ’84-’92; J. N. Todd, ’84-’88; James A. Williams, ’88-’92; 
Thomas H. Peabody, ’92-’96; G. H. Slade, ’92-’96; Henry B. Met- 
calf, ’96-’08; Smith Quimby, ’96-’08; C. H. Tilley, ’o8-’12; Bernon 
FE. Helme, ’o8-’12; L. E. Remington, ’12-’20; Frederick T. Jencks, 
’12-’24; George W. Jeffery, ’20-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: H. S. Woodworth, ’87-’88 and ’92; 
John W. Blodgett, 89; James A. Williams, ’93-’00; Elisha T. Read, 
’oI-04 and *10-’"11; C. H. Tilley, ’04-’08; Roscoe W. Phillips, ’13- 
°20. 

South Carolina. ‘The members of the National Committee were: 
Mrs. Sallie F. Chapin, *82-’88; James’ H. Carlisle, ’82-’84; J. P. 
Prince, ’88-’92; H. F. Chreitzberg, ’88-’92. 





wwePPEN DIX reer igd } 655) 


The State Chairmen were: W. B. Ingle, ’02; Charles A. Smith, 
’o7; George Gary Lee, 713-16. 

South Dakota. The candidates for Governor were: M. D. Alex- 
ander, ’94; J. F. Hanson, ’96; Knute Lewis, ’98; F. J. Carlisle, ’00 ; 
H. H. Curtis, ’02; W. J. Edgar, ’04; Knute Lewis, ‘06; G. F. 
Knappen, ’08; O. W. Butterfield, ’10 and ’12; C. K. Thompson, ’14 
and ’16. 

The members of the National Committee were: A. R. Cornwall, 
’92-’96; H. H. Roser, ’92-’96; J. A. Lucas, ’96-’00; J. F. Hanson, 
’96-’00 ; H. H. Curtis, ’00-’04; F. J. Carlisle, ’o0-’04; Dr. C. V. Tem- 
pleton, ’o4-’12 and ’16-’20; Quincy Lee Morrow, ’o8-'16; W. T. 
Rafferty, 712-24; Mrs. Flora Mitchell, ’20-’24. 

The State Chairmen were: J. A. Lucas, ’94; W. A. Stromme, ’oo- 
’92: Dr. C. V. Templeton, ’02-’15 ; Quincy Lee Morrow, ‘16-18. 

Tennessee. The candidates for Governor were: J. G. Johnson, 
’88: D. C. Kelly, ’90; Judge E. H. East, ’92; Josephus Hopwood, 
’96; W. D. Turnley, ’98; R. S. Cheves, 00 and ’o2. 

The members of the National Committee were: Emerson Ethe- 
ridge, ’82-’84; William A. Sinclair, ’82-’84; J. W. Smith, "84-92; 
J. R. Anderson, ’84-’88; James A. Tate, ’88-’08; A. D. Reynolds, 
’92-’96 and ’04-’12; R. S. Cheves, ’96-’04; J. B. Stinespring, 08-12. 

The State Chairmen were: W. A. Clendenning, ’87; George 5. 
Armistead, ’88-’90; James A. Tate, ’90-’07; J. B. Stinespring, ‘08; 
R. B. Eleazar, ’12. 

Texas. The candidates for Governor were: E. L. Dohoney, ’86; 
Marion Martin, ’88; E. O. Heath, ’90; D. M. Prendergast, ’92; J. M. 
Dunn, ’94; Randolph Clark, ’96; B. P. Bailey, ’98; H. G. Damon, 
’00; George W. Carroll, ’02; W. D. Jackson, 704; J. W. Pearson, 
706; E. C. Heath, ’08; Andrew Jackson Houston, ’10 and ’12; H. 
W. Lewis, ’16. 

The members of the National Committee were: E. L. Dohoney, 
*82-’92; W. H. Hamlin, ’84-’88; J. B. Cranfill, ’88-’00 and ’04-’123 
E. C. Heath, ’92-’00; D. H. Hancock, ’oo-’04; J. G. Adams, 04-08 ; 
Walter C. Swengle, ’08-’11; Thomas Brown, ’11-’12; P. F. Paige, 
’12-’20; J. L. Campbell, ’12-’16; H. L. Winchell, ’16-’20. 

The State Chairmen were: J. B. Cranfill, ’87; W. D. Jackson, 
’88-’00; E. C. Heath, ’91, ’92, 96; W. D. Knowles, ’92; E. A. Wingo, 
’96; B. T. Bailey, 00; E. H. Contbear, ’o2-’10; P. F. Paige, ’11-’12 
and ’16; A. A. Evarts, ’13. 

Utah. The only candidate for Governor was Jacob 5. Boreman, 
700. 

The members of the National Committee were: Jacob S. Boreman, 
’00-’04; C. D. Savery, ’00-’04; Robert T. Shields, ’°08-’12; Miss Edith 
Wade, ’08-’12; W. N. Jonas, ’16-’20; Henry P. Olson, ’16-’20. 

The State Chairmen were: Richard Wake, ’o2-’06; Hugh L. 
Glenn, ’20. 

Vermont. The candidates*for Governor were: Henry M. Seeley, 
86 and ’88; Ernest L. Allen, ’90 and ’92; Rodney W. Whittemore, 


656 PROHIBITION IN THE®UNITED STATES 


94 and ’96; C. W. Wyman, ’98; Henry C. Barnes, ’oo; Rev, Joel O. 
Sherburne, ’02; Homer F. Cummings, ’o4; Dr. L. W. Hanson, ’o6; 
FE. M. Campbell, ’o8; Edwin R. Towle, ’10; Clement F. Smith 
(Fusion), ’12 and ’14; Dr. L. W. Hanson, 716; William B. Mayo, 
"18; James Hartness (Fusion), ’20; George S. Wood, "24. 

The members of the National Committee were: C. W. Wyman, 
88-04; Clinton Smith, °88-’92; W. P. Stafford, "92-'963°H. 1G; 
Barnes, ’96-’00; H. F. Cummings, ’oo-’04; W. T. Miller, ’o4-’08; 
Fred L. Page, ’o4-’o8 and "12-16; H. S. Eldred, 08-12; Dr. L. W. 
Hanson, ’o08-’24; George S. Wood, *16-'24. 

The State Chairmen were: Clinton R. Smith, 87; Wendell P. 
Stafford, ’89-’90; C. W. Wyman, 92; F. H. Shepard, ’92-’96; John 
LaFort yr.) %00 9 Dr Ww: Hanson, ’oI-’03 and "1122400 SM, 
Harris, ’04-’08; T. C. Andrews, ’I0. 

Virginia, The candidates for Governor were: Thomas E. Taylor, 
89; James R. Miller, ’93; L. A. Cutler, 97; O. C. Rucker, ’or. 

The members of the National Committee were: Thomas E. Tay- 
lor, ’84-’88; Rumsey Smithson, °84-’88; James W. Newton, °88-’06 ; 
R. H. Rawlings, ’88-’92; W. W. Gibbs, 92-96; J. R. Miller, *G6- 
‘00; James W. Bodley, ’96-’12; W. T. Bundick, ’oo-’o4; G. M. 


Smithdeal, ’o4-’12; William A. Rife, °12-’16; H. M. Hoge, ’12-’16; 


T. M. Hammond, ’16-’20; Dr. E. R. MclIntyer, ’16-’24; Mrs. E. R. 
MclIntyer, ’20-’21. 

The State Chairmen were: Capt. A. H. Fultz, °82; M. M. Sibert, 
88; J. M. Newton, ’90; W. W. Gibbs, ’93; Col. J. R. Miller, 94; 
B. Lacy Hoge, ’95-’96; W. T. Bundick, ‘00-’o1 ; J. O. Alwood, ’o2- 
06; James W. Bodley, ’07-’o9; G. M. Smithdeal, ’ro-’11; William 
A. Rife, ’12-’14; F. M. Hammond, ’15; Dr. E. R. MclIntyer, ’16-’24. 

Washington. The candidates for Governor were: Roger S. 
Greene, ’92; R. E. Dunlap, 96 and ’oo; A. H. Sherwood, ’04; A. S. 
Caton, ’08; George Stievers, 12; A. B. L. Gellerman, ’16. 

The members of the National Committee were: R. S. Greene, 
’88-’92 and ’oo-’04; S. T. Dimmick, 88-’92; E. B. Sutton, ’92-’96; 
G. D. Strong, ’92-’96; C. Davis, ’96-’00; W. H. Gillstrap, ’96-’00; 
E. S$. Smith, ’00-04; R. E. Dunlap, ’04-’12; W. H. Roberts, 04-08 ; 
Guy Posson, ’o8-’11; O. L. Fowler, ’t1-’12; H. T. Murray, ’12-’16; 
Mrs. Nettie Hellenbeck, ’12-’20; Walter F. McDowell, ’16-’20. 

The State Chairmen were; C. L. Haggard, ’00; R. E. Dunlap, 
’oI-'07; Guy Posson, ’08-’09; James McDowell, ’10; O. L. Fowler, 
"11-12; Mrs. Nettie Hellenbeck, "12-16; H. T. Murray, °16; W. E. 
Haycox, ’20. 

West Virginia. The candidates for Governor were: Frank Burt, 
92; T. C. Johnson, ’96; Thomas R. Carskadon, ’00; Joseph W. Bed- 
ford, ’04; Edward W. Mills, ’o8: J. Goodloe Jackson, ’12. 

The members of the National Committee were: Frank Burt, 
°84-’00; T. R. Carskadon, ’92-’08: U. A. Clayton, ’oo-’16; E. W. 
Mills, ’08-’12; Jay E. Cunningham, ’12-’24; Goodloe Jackson, ’16- 
24; Samuel Dorsey, ’24-’28; Rev. George W. Ogden, ’24-’28. 


en 


APPENDIX 657 


The State Chairmen were: Dave D. Johnson, ’87-’91; J. Howard 
Holt, ’96; U. A. Clayton, ’00-’07 and ’10-’11; Edward W. Mills, ’07- 
"10; J. W. Bedford, ’12-"18; A. W. Martin, ’20-’22. 

Wisconsin. The candidates for Governor were: C. E. Hammond, 
75; William L. Bloomfield, ’79; Theodore D. Kanouse, ’81; Samuel 
D. Hastings, °84; John M. Olin, ’96; E. G. Durant, ’88; Charles 
lesaider 003, ..C, Richmond, ’92 3}. A. Clezhor)/649)).. 11. 
Berkey, 96; Eugene W. Chafin, ’98; J. Burritt Smith, ’°00; E. W. 
Drake. 62 iW.s tH. Clark, Yo4:°E. Le Eaton,.:’06 + Wa DaAGox 0c: 
D. E. VanKeuren, ’10; Charles L. Hill, ’12; David W. Emerson, 
714; George B. McKerrow, ’16; W. C. Dean, ’18; Henry H. Tubbs, 
’°20; M. L. Welles, ’22; A. R. Bucknam, ’24. 

The members of the National Committee were: J. M. May, ’69; 
H. W. Brown, ’76-’80; T. D. Stone, ’76-’82; Mrs. C. W. Pinkham, 
"80-82; J. J. Sutton, ’82-’84; Samuel D. Hastings, ’82-’04; B. E. 
VankKeuren, ’84-’92 and ’o8-’16; E. W. Chafin, ’92-’96; O. B. Olson, 
’96-’04; Alfred Gabrielson, ’o4-’08; W. D. Cox, ’08-’12; A. J. Ben- 
jamin, ’12-’20; Henry H. Tubbs, ’16-’28; William C. Dean, ’20-’24; 
Oliver Needham, ’24-’28. 

The State Chairmen were: T. C. Richmond, ’87-’91; M. O. Nel- 
son, 91; C. F. Cronk, ’92-’96; J. E. Clayton, ’96-’06; W. D. Cox, 
’07; J. Burritt Smith, ’o9-’14; A. J. Benjamin, ’15-’16; William C. 
Dean, ’17-’20; Oliver Needham, ’24. 

Wyoming. The candidates for Governor were: William Brown, 
’92; George W. Blaine, ’06. 

The members of the National Committee were: O. S. Jackson, 
’92~06; M. J. Waage, ’92-’96; L. L. Laughlin, ’o4-’12; Dr. C. J. 
Sawyer, ’04-’12; J. R. Cortner, ’16-’20; A. B. Campbell, ’16-’20. 

The State Chairmen were: Emma FE. Page, ’92; C. J. Sawyer, 
ios. L. Lauchlin, ‘10-12; J. R. Cortner, 12716; Rev.) Orem 
aking 722 









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INDEX 


Adams, John, and temperance 
reform, 13, 14 
Address to the People, Gerrit 
Smith, 69, 75 
Adequate Remedy for a National 
Evil, An, John Russell, 99 
Administration, 455, 608 
Alabama, law repealed through 
liquor power, 345 
Statewide prohibition, 334 
Alaska, prohibition in territorial 
laws, 179, 440 
Alcohol and the State, Robert 
C. Pitman, 87, 120, 361 
Alcohol Consumption, 549 
Alcoholic Liquor Traffic, Com- 
mittee of Inquiry on, 102 
Alcoholism, deaths, 479, 489, 
Effects of, 489, 576 
Alienation of votes, 397, 398, 
567, 637 
American Advance, The, 343 
American Temperance Society, 
ro. al 
American Temperance Union, 
18, 39, 45 
Anti-Saloon League, The, 380 
Catechism of, 390 
Compromises of, 394 
“Good man” theory, 382, 391, 
AOI 
History of, early, 384 
Hobson Amendment, and the, 


394. 
Illinois, in, 391, 392 
Local option and, 359, 369 
Local option in Ohio and, 387 
Maps on local option mislead- 
ing, 306 


Omni-partisan plan, 390, 395 
659 


Anti-Saloon League, 
Opportunism of, 395 
Oregon, attitude in, 408 
Organization of, 386 
Policy of, political, 399 
Principles, declaration of, 390 
Prohibition Party and, 380 
Reed Amendment, 394 
Scholarship in, 395 
“Step” theory, 393 

Anti-Saloon League Blue Book, 

90 
Anti-Saloon League Catechism, 


390 
Anti-Saloon Republican Move- 
ment, 385 
Appleton, Gen. James, 19, 29 
Arizona, prohibition in, 377 
Vote, 435, 430 
Arkansas, local option in, 375 
Vote, 438 
Armstrong, Dr. Lebbeus, 15, 43 
Army canteen, the, 304 
Deaths due to liquor, 304 
Liquor evil during Civil War, 
58 
Liquor-selling to soldiers, 17 
Spirit ration abolished, 17 
Arrests for drunkenness, 474, 
489 
Artman, Judge, decision, 334 
Auxiliary Organizations, 323, 
344 


Bain, George W., 143, 246 
Balance of power, 83, 566, 623 
(Also see Liquor Interests ) 
Ballot, responsibility for, 163, 
204, 207, 271, these.) 27 3) 

286, 2287, 315 


660 


Baptist Church Home Mission 
Society, and liquor, 267 
Beecher, Rev. Lyman, 15, 18 
Beer and Wine, army canteen 
in, 304 
Beer output, 552 
Capital invested, 546 
Consumption of, 17, 105, 548, 
601 
Iowa permits, 47 
Massachusetts permits, 87 
Near-beer places licensed in 
Georgia, 346 
Prohibition of, 
599 
Return to, 39 
Vote on, 439 
Bibliography, Select, 27, 48, 199, 
237; 201, 275; 292, 3933 352; 
379; 495, 424, 469, 545 
Bicameral Principle in the New 
York Legislature, The, D. 
Leigh Colvin, 463, 613 
Bicameral System, the, 141, 611, 
613 
Bidwell, John, 250 
Blacks Jaines! = O19 04,)170e403) 
155, 188, 247, 277 
Death of, 260 
Blind Tigers, 297 
Board of Health, Washington, 
liquor prohibition by, 17 
“Bone Dry” Laws, 440, 441 
Brehm, Miss Marie C., 467 
Brooks, Dr. John A., 189 
Burchard, Dr., famous allitera- 
tion of, 164, 165 


reasons for, 


California, dry counties decrease, 
Sra 
First prohibition vote in, 135 
Local option in, 357 
Randall campaign in, 409 
Votes, 436, 438 
Campaigns, National, 95, 113, 
120,, 101, 241,240, e131, 
331, 423, 463, 464 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Carroll, George W., 328 
Cary, General, 48 
Cass, Gen. Lewis, 17 
Catholic Church, Roman, Leo 
XIII, Pope, favors total ab- 
stinence, 268 
Prohibition principles of, 269 
Third Plenary Council, 268 
Total Abstinence Union, 268, 
269 
Zurcher, work of Father, 269 
Catholics and Prohibition, 269 
Century of Drink Reform, A, 
Fehlandt, 231 
Chafin, Eugene W., 258.0 4973 
340, 351, 608, 633 
Arizona, work in, 431 
Chairmen, National, 88, 95, 113, 
123; 1331543161) 10292 7am 
260, 306, 331, 351, 406, 467, 
468 
Chase, Simeon B., 88-89, 95 
Chicago Lever, 260 
Cholera Epidemic, liquor pro- 
hibition during, 17 
Christian Church, American 
Temperance Board, 275 
Temperance and, 268 
Churches, Federal Council of, 


443 
Principles of the, 269 
Reaction in resolutions of the, 
274 
Voice of the, 264 
(See Individual 
tions ) 
Cider, consumption of, 17 
Citizens’ Union of Michigan, 385 
Civil Damage Act, First, 25 
Civil Damage Law, 97 
Effects of, 102 | 
Civil War, liquor evil during, 58 
Clark, Dr. Billy J., 15, 43, 136 
Close states, 198, 398, 513, 565, 
‘ 


Denomina- 


Colorado, dry counties decrease, 


374 





INDEX 


Colorado, 
Towns elect straight ticket, 
seven, 254 


Votes, 435, 436 
Colvin, D. Leigh, 462, 468 


Committee, National, 64, 113, 
133, 161, 167, 169, 192, 238, 
351, 467, 408 

Committee of Sixty on National 
Prohibition, 412 

Compensation, 523 

Competition for liquor vote, 98, 
159 

Congregational Church, license 
system, and the, 271 

Congress, Blair Amendment in- 
troduced, 179 

Eighteenth Amendment, sub- 
mission of, 444, 447 

First party Prohibitionist 
elected to, 241 

Hobson Amendment, 394 

Instruction in District of Co- 
lumbia, 179 

Memorial for National Pro- 
hibition presented to, 413 

Reed Amendment, 394 

Territories, prohibitory laws 
for, 440 

Volstead Law, 490 

War Prohibition, 443, 445 

Webb-Kenyon Act, 440 

Congressional Temperance So- 
ciety, 17, 95 

Connecticut, decrease 
towns, 374 

History of party in, 107 

Legislator elected, 333 

Local option in, 356 

Loss of prohibitory law, IoI 

Organization of state party, 
BI 

Prohibitory laws in, 21, 33 

Repeal of prohibition, 108 

Return to license, 39 

Saloons in, 364 

Submission, failure of, 141 


in dry 


661 


Constitution, why prohibition in, 


aoa 
Constitutional Government im 
the United States, Wood- 


row Wilson, 621 
Constitutional Prohibition, state, 
limitations, 219 
Weapon only, 242 


Why, 136 
Continental Congress, prohibi- 
tion resolution, 13 
Conventions, National, 65, 109, 


123, 151, 187, 246, 250, 309, 
326, 330, 349, 413, 457, 404 
Cornerstone, The, 30 
Court Decisions, Georgia law 
weakened by, 345 
Indiana, 334 
(See United States Supreme 
Court) 
Cranfill, James B., 251, 339 
Crime and license, 16 
Crime statistics, 477 


Dakota Territory, plebiscite in, 


t44 
Daniel, William, 157, 168 
Death rate, decline of, 479 
Defeat or Victory, Mee and 
Holden, 443 
Defender, The, 336 
Delaware, prohibitory law passed, 
33 
Democratic Party, attitude to- 
ward prohibition, 222 
Competition for wet vote, 103 
Leaders in pay of liquor in- 
LEKeSts 7207 
Liquor aid in Jowa, 213 
Plank, 1924, 503 
Platforms, prohibition effect 
on, 176 
Prohibition and the, in Maine, 
40, 46 
Prohibition planks of, 433 
Wet vote, caters to, 398 
Wet vote in New York, 198 


662 


Dickie, Samuel, 192, 238, 246, 
254, 200, 273, 310, 337 
Death of, 261 
Debates of, 342 
Disciples of Christ (See Chris- 
tian Church), 275 
Dispensary System, Chapter on, 
295 
Blind Tigers, 297 
Claims for, 295 
Counter proposal to  prohibi- 
tion, 293 7 
First operated in South Caro- 
lina, 293 
Political corruption, 298 
Provisions of, 294 
Results of, 295 
Tillman, Governor, 294 
Distilled Spirits, 17, 548 
Distilleries, effect of temperance 
work on, 16 
District of Columbia, instruction 
on effects of alcohol, 179 
Prohibition in, 441 
Platt Bill, 180 
Dow, Neal, 29, 40, 42, 127; 1120) 
188, 319, 514 
Death of, 260 
Drink bill, 549 
Drunkenness, arrests for, 474, 
489 
Decrease in, 474 
Georgia, arrests in, 346 
High license and, 233 
Local option, under, 367 
Massachusetts, arrests in, 406 
Dry Laws and Wet Politicians, 
Harold D. Wilson, 408 


Education, Effect of prohibition 

on, 486, 582 

Intercollegiate Prohibition As- 
sociation, 188 

Temperance instruction laws, 
178, 201 

Tennessee schools after Civil 
War, 363 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Effects of Ardent Spirits upon 
the Human Mind and Body, 
Dr. Benjamin Rush, 13 
Eighteenth Amendment, 449 
Administration of, 488, 495 
Betrayal of, 508 
Political system underlying 
prohibition, 508 
Principle of national prohibi- 
tion, 575 
Ratification of, 448, 451 
Reasons for constitutional 
prohibition, 594 
Scope and effect of, 597 
Submission of, 444 
Supreme Court decisions, 516 
Violations of, 503 
Volstead Law, 490 
Electoral votes from dry states, 
631 
Enforcement, by Neal Dow, 31 
In 1920-1925, 488 
Kansas, party organically in- 
capable, 222 
Local, 505, 638 
Maine Law Party, 42 
Maine, subjection to Republi- 
can national politics, 225 
More taxing on party than en- 
actment, 152 
Pearson in Maine, 319 
Poor in Connecticut, wet off- 
cers, 49 
Poor in Massachusetts, divided 
allegiance, 86 
Russell on reason why poor, 
malcondition of politics, 134 


Faris, Herman P., 467 

Farmers’ Alliance, 241 

Father Mathew Man, The, 269 

Ferguson, William P. F., ad- 
dress of, 342 


Editor, 335 
Libel suit against, 336 
Fiddlers, The, Arthur Mee, 


443 


_ ae 
7 2 = eee ——————— Oe ae 
LL ee ee 


INDEX 


Finch, John B., 143, 146, 161, 
179, 208, 226, 264, 447, 514, 
524 
Announcement on vote, 164 
Death of, 185 
Debates of, 185 
On compensation, 524 
On necessity for party, 226 
Fisk, Gen. Clinton B., 155, 168, 
189 
Gubernatorial 
171 
Letter of acceptance, 192 
Florida, county vote for prohibi- 
tion, 378 
Legislator elected, 333 
Local option in, 375 
Prohibition defeated by local 
option, 367 
Years between local option 
and prohibition, 377 
Vote, 435 
Flournoy Movement, 22 
Flying Squadron of America, 
The,yary 
Enlistment pledge, 412 
Free Methodist Church, attitude 
toward prohibition, 271 
General Conference, 275 


campaign of, 


Georgia, agitation for political 

action, 61 

Dispensary system in, 293 

Early prohibition laws, 13 

Flournoy Movement, 22 

Hostile court decision, 345 

Local option in, 356, 358, 37° 

Near-beer saloons licensed, 
346 

No-license in, 24 

Period from local option to 
prohibition, 376 

Prohibition in, history of, 333 

Prohibition postponed by local 
option, 366 

Prohibitory law adopted, 302 


663 


Georgia, 
W.C. T. U. moral uprising in, 


371 
“Good man” theory, 274, 382, 
AOI 
Anti-Saloon League, 39! 
Weakness of, 289 
Good Templars, Independent 
Order of, 61, 62, 119, 146 
Gough, John B., 71, 120, 101 
Government, Constitutional, and 
political system, 610 
Parties and liquor politics, 
629 
Party system, basis of, 612 
President, powers of the, 626 
Prohibition and the American 
system of, 605 
State, sphere of the, 584 
Greeley, Horace, 43, 60, 97 


Haddock, Rev. George C., mur- 
der of, 170 

Hanly, J. Frank, 345, 414 

Hinshaw, Virgil G., 351, 406, 


452 
Hobson Amendment, 394 
Home Defender, The, 336 
Home Protection Party, 132 


Idaho, liquor interests defeat 
public men, 345 
Prohibition, all parties for, 432 
Prohibition vote in, 377 
Ratification unanimous, 432 
Statewide prohibition in, 375 
Vote, 435 
“T Hate It,” Hanly, 415 
Illinois, court decision on license, 
235 
Dry counties decrease in, 374 
Lincoln Chautauquas, 332 
Lincoln in favor of prohibi- 
tion, 35 
Local option in, 356, 358 
Newspaper support in, 170 
No-license in, 357 


664 


Illinois, 
Prohibition defeated, 34 
Prohibitionists elected in, 170, 
260, 331 
State party in, 67 
State ticket in 1870, 87 
Vote in, 135, 260 
We, Tit Uingez5 
Independent Temperance Party 
in Connecticut, 51 
Indiana, amendment, history of 
proposed, 140, 149 
Baxter law, the, 101 
Convention of 1900, 307 
County option, 345 
Court decisions, 334 
First prohibitory law in, 33 
Hanly, J. Frank, 345 
Law declared unconstitutional, 


Md 

Local option in, 365, 373 

Map of dry sections mislead- 
ing, 366 

No-license in, 24 

Party organized in, 148 

People’s party, 46 

Prohibition sentiment Sweeps, 


45 
Republican party in, 150 
Return to license, 47 
State platform, 150 
Indians, liquor prohibited Lobes 
17 
Insanity, 480, 489 
Intercollegiate Prohibition Asso- 
ciation, 324, 409, 463 
Oratorical contests, 324 
Study courses, 324 
Intercollegiate Statesman, 324 
Internal Revenue, Prohibition 
and the Bureau of, 495 
Internal Revenue Act, effects, 52 
Passage of, 49 
Tax effect on saloons, 283 
International Record, The, 344 
Intoxicating Liquors, H. C. 
Black, 234 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Iowa, amendment invalidated, 
140 

Amendment of law, 39 

Constitutional amendment in, 
139 A 

Constitutional prohibition lost, 
437, 438 

Parties and prohibition in, 222 

Prohibition history in, 213 

Prohibitory law in, 33 

Mulct Law, 214 

No-license in, 24 


Vote, 437, 439 


Jefferson, Thomas, on evil ef- 
fects of liquor, 14 

Johnson, Hale, 258 

Joint Legislative Committee for 
the Modification of the Vol- 
stead Act, 398 

Jones, Charles R., 331, 342 

Jones-Randall Bill, 44I 

Reed Amendment to, 441 

Journal of the American Tem- 
perance Union, 36 

Junior Prohibition Clubs, 238 


Kansas, activity of liquor inter- 
ests, 216 
Constitutional prohibition, 137, 
138 
First ticket, 109 
Republican party in, 148, 222 
Soldiers of, prohibition effect 
on, 442 
Vote in, 435 , 
Kentucky, local option law in, 
Da 
Period from local option to 
prohibition, 377 
Vote, 435 
Vote in 1887, 168 


Labor, effect of liquor on, 86, 
577-582 
Effect of prohibition on, 481I~ 
486 


INDEX 665 


Lake Bluff Convocation, 132 
Landrith, Ira, 416 
Lathrap, Mrs. Mary T., 132, 


Legislation, 


Repeal of state laws in fifties, 


143, 168, 282 
Eulogy of, 290 
Legislation, Blair Amendment, 


I 

“Bone dry” law in Oregon, 
409 

Constitutional amendment cam- 
paign, Kansas et al, 135 

Continental Congress, 13 

Domination by liquor power, 
304. 

Eighties, in early, 140 

Fifteen Gallon Law of Mas- 
sachusetts, 21 

Fifties, in the, 32 

First state law, 21 

Gallon and quart laws, 394 

Georgia near-beer saloons: li- 
censed, 346 

High license, 228 

High license and local option, 
209 

Indiana county option, 345 

Indians, selling to, 13, 17 

Internal Revenue Act, 52 

Iowa constitutional amend- 


ment, 139 

Kansas constitutional amend- 
ment, 137 

License amendment in Ohio, 
ee eae aw 

Limitations of amendment 
method, 219 


Local option, 356 

Local option laws in eighties, 
178 

Maine Law of 1851, 31 

Mulct Law, 394 

National, progress of, 440 

Platt Bill, 180 

Prohibitory laws strengthened 
following 1884, 178 

Repeal of prohibitory laws, 
211,226 


9 
Scientific Temperance Instruc- 
tion laws, 178 
Scott Tax Law in Ohio, 142 
State constitutional amend- 
ment campaigns 1887-90, 
202 
State constitutions, methods 
of amending, I4I 
Temperance instruction laws, 
178 
Tennessee local prohibition, 
SOSH ie 
(See Individual States) 
Leonard, Dr. A. B., 168, 196, 
273 
Lever, The, 147 
Levering, Joshua, 258, 337 
Lewis, Dr. Dio, 116 
Liberal Party, formation of, 40 
License, Chapter on, 228 
Agitation for abolition, 24, 25 
Agitation for repeal, 21 
Claims for high, 229 
Compromises on, 209 
Early movement for repeal 
Of eet 
Early no-license states, 24 
Ethics, ‘oimthen236 
High, advocacy of, 228 
Increase in numbers, 16 
Legal theory of, 234 
Near-beer saloons licensed, 
340 
Objection to, 20 
Ohio vote in 1874, 142 
Political effects of high, 231 
Revenue claims of high, 234 
Life of Finch, The, 185 
Lincoln, Abraham, advocacy of 
prohibition, 35 
On prohibition, 60 
Liquor Interests, activities of, 


Doe sb 
Advertising prohibited, 441 


666 


Liquor Interests, 

Alliances, 213, 253, 562, 568, 
640 

Analysis of power of, 561 

Anti-prohibition propaganda, 
217 

Army, and the, 304 

Assaults in Prohibition states, 
216 

Balance of power, 97, 213, 
222, 223, 345, 346, 397, 550, 
565 

Balance of power, effect of, 
433 

Bankers’ and Business Men’s 
Association, 215 

Bootlegging, 218 

Brewers’ Association, U. Se 
(see United States Brewers’ 
Association ) 

Candidates, picking of, 219 

Capital of, 230, 546 

Cities, entrenched in the, 364, 
376 

Complete 
for, 599 

Consolidation of, 230 

Consumption, 244, 548 

Consumption of alcohol, 549 

Consumption of spirits under 
local option, 365 

Corruption, political, 209, 554, 
556 

Deal with Republicans, 198 

Defection, fear of, 96 

Domination of, 398 

Drink bill, 549 

Drive against prohibition, 211 

Effort to silence National Pro- 
hibitionist, 336 

Eighteenth Amendment, fight 
against, 444 

Entrenched in government, 52 

Evil effects of, 576 

Farm Herald, 215 

Government, effects upon, 570, 


5/2 


prohibition, need 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Liquor Interests, 


Growth of traffic during Civil 
War, 58 

Haddock murder, 170 

Harrison, under President, 


244 

High license, 228 

Iowa, in, 139 

Increase of political power, 
103 

Influence of, evil, 590 

Intimidated politicians, 510 

Kansas, in, 137 

Lawlessness, 558 

Lobbying for army canteen, 
395 

Marginal vote, control ot, 222 
398, 513, 565, 566, 638 

Mobile vote, 198, 319, 563 

Model License League, 336 

National Protective Associa- 
tion, 203 

New York politics, in, 45 

Organizations of, 551 

Overholt distillery, 403 

Parasitic industry, 481, 579 

Party system and the, 629 

Personal liberty claim, 586 

Philippine Islands, in the, 305 

Political methods of, 205, 510, 
556, 560, 563 

Political power of, 198, 206, 


a fe 
Power of, 546, 561 
Price increase shifted to con- 
sumer, 231 
Propaganda, 217, 507 
Raster Resolution, 96 
Removed by prohibition, 480 
Reorganization of, 203 
Saloon, effects of, 547 
Saloons, political centers, 232, 
562 
Saloons return in Iowa, 214 
Slaughter of public men favor- 
ing prohibition, 344 
Sunday laws violated, 232 


eT 
EE ————————— ee ee OOOO 


ee ee ee ee eee 


OS ae gp Be 


INDEX 


Liquor Interests, 
Supreme Court decisions on, 
516 
Tariff and the, 194 
Taxation, effect on, 571 
Unlicensed saloons, 233 
Washingtonian Movement and 
saloons, 23 
Whisky frauds, 105 
Whisky Trust, 204, 336 
Literature (see Bibliography ) 
Literature of the Seventies, 120 
Local Option, Chapter on, 355 
Anti-Saloon League advocates 
of, 359, 307 
Defects of, 359 
Definition of, 356 
Drunkenness arrests 
367 
Dry county survey under, 373 
Dry states not having local op- 
tion, 369, 377 
Early history of, 356 
Georgia, history in, 370 
High license and, 209 
In cities, 376 
Limitations of, 357, 358, 371 
Liquor consumption under, 
365 | 
Liquor interests entrenched in 
cities, 364 
Maps misleading, 366 
Obstacle to prohibition, 366 
Saloons closed under, 374 
Self-government claim of, 367 
Smith, Gerrit on, 77 
South, in the, 358 
State prohibition postponed 
by, 366 
Status, not step, 377 
Step toward prohibition, was 
it?, 368 
Temporary gains in, IOI 
Transportation and, 366 
Unit covered by, the, 355 
Wilderness period of reform, 


379 


under, 


667 


Louisiana, Shreveport dry by lo- 
cal option, 376 


Maine, early legislation in, 29 
Enforcement in, 223, 224, 319 
Law of 1851, 31 
Party policy in, 223 
Pearson, Sheriff, 319 
Prohibition in, history of, 143 
Prohibition in politics, 40 
Repeal of prohibitory laws, 68 
Restrictive laws, 22 
Return to license, 39 
Temperance societies, 15 
Votes, 143, 225, 435 

Maine Temperance Society, 30 

Maine Temperance Union, 30 

Marginal vote, 96, 565 

Marsh, John, 18, 25, 45 

Maryland, dry counties in, 358 
Dry counties increase, 375 
First prohibitory bill, 33 

Massachusetts, difficulties with 

law, 87 
Fifteen Gallon Law, 21 
First restrictive laws, 13 
History of prohibitory law, 
136 
No-license cities decrease, 374 
No-license in, 24 
Platform of 1870, 84 
Prohibition first favored, 19 
Prohibition repealed, IOI 
Prohibitory laws in, 32 
Refusal of licenses in, 16 
Return to license, 39, 104 
Seventies, in the, 109, 114 
Shaw campaign in, 410 
State ticket in 1870, 87 
Submission, vote on, I41 
Temperance societies in, 15 
Vote on no-license, 355, 350 

Mathew, Father, 120 
Work of, 26 

Merwin, Major, 36, 60 

Medal contests, 170, 307 

Metcalf, Henry B., 317 


668 


Methodist Episcopal Church, 

Attitude toward liquor traffic, 
266 

Central Pennsylvania Confer- 
ence, 274 

Genesee Conference, 274 

Moral aspect of license, on, 
236 

New England Conference, 272 

New Jersey Conference, 271 

Reactionary resolutions of, 
274, 393 

Rock River Conference, 272 

Temperance, Prohibition and 
Public Morals, Board of, 


275 
Wyoming Conference, 273 _ 
Methodist Protestant Church, 


prohibition attitude, 271 
Methods of solution: 
Constitutional amendment 
method, limitations of, 219 
Dispensary, 293 
High license, 228 
Local option, 355 
Omni-partisan plan, 370, 511 


Michigan, amendment, failure 
of, 141 
Anti-license in constitution, 
136, 357 


Beer and wine permitted, 39 

County vote on state prohibi- 
tion, 378 

Court decision on license, 235 

Dickie vote in, 169 

Dry counties, 374 

Election frauds, 209 

Licenses refused, 25 

No-license in, 24, 358 

Prohibition repealed, tor 

Prohibitory law in, 32 

State party in, 65 

State ticket in 1870, 87 

Vote, 435, 436 

Vote on saloons, 388 

Minnesota, law declared un- 

constitutional, 39 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Minnesota, 
“Out to Win” campaign, 332 
Prohibitionists elected, 332 
Prohibitory law in, 32 
State ticket in, 87 
Vote, 436, 438 
Mississippi, local option in, 358 
Period from local option to 
prohibition, 376 
Prohibition postponed by local 
option, 366 
Restrictive laws, 22 
“Step” theory in, 372 
Typical local option 
379 
Missouri, effect of local option, 
374 
Vote, 436, 438 
Model License League, 342 
Momitor-Journal, The, 150 


state, 


Montana, prohibition in, 3773 
433 
Vote, 435 


Moreau, New York, first tem- 
perance society organized 
in, 14 

Mulct Law, 394 


Nation, Mrs, Carry A., 321 

National Committee, address of, 
239 | 

National Dry Federation, 450, 
453 

National Enquirer, 415 

National Legislative Conference, 
450 

National Liberator, The, 132 

National Non-Partisan League, 
385 

National Prohibition (see Pro- 
hibition ) 

National Prohibition Act, 450 


National Prohibition Alliance, 
II4 

National Prohibition Bureau, 
168 


National Prohibition Cases, 543 





INDEX 


National Prohibitionst, 
founding of, 335 
Liquor interests try to silence, 
lugsee 
National Temperance Advocate, 
62 
National Temperance Conven- 
tions, 16, 17, 18, 26, 50, 60, 
63, 70, 106, 276 


The, 


National Temperance Council, 
41I, 450 

National Temperance Society, 
62, 106, 386 

National Temperance Society 


and Publication House, 60 
Nebraska, amendment defeated, 
241 
Dry counties fluctuate, 375 
Election frauds, 210 
High license law, 228 
Liquor funds used in, 204 
Prohibition adopted by, 34 
Return to license, 39 
Saloons in, 233 
Vote in, 435 
Nevada, prohibition in, 377 
Vote in, 435 
New Hampshire, agitation for 
political action, 61 
First prohibitory bill, 33 
Local option in, 356 
No-license in, 24 
Prohibition adopted, 34 
Prohibition supplanted by local 
option, 367 
Restrictive laws, 22 
Seventies, in the, 109 
State ticket in 1870, 87 
New Jersey, amendment, failure 
Of tat 
County option law, 172 
Failure to pass prohibitory 
law, 357 
First restrictive laws, 13 
Fisk campaign, 171 
Prohibition twice defeated by 
one vote, 34 


669 


New Jersey, 
Vote in, 135 
WaC.ol, \Usipetitiongs172 
New Mexico, percentage of pro- 
hibition vote in, 377 
Vote, 435 
Newspapers, Prohibition, 66, 122, 
203, 335, 343, 428 
Subsidized by liquor interests, 
2r6 
New Voice, The, 336 
College department of, 343 
New York, constitutional amend- 
ment proposed, 136 
Enforcement Act repealed, 506 
First prohibitory bill, 33 
First temperance society or- 
ganized in, 14 
Hopkins campaign, 1882, 134 
Law declared unconstitutional, 


Liquor interests and Repub- 
licans in, 198 
Local option in 1845, 357 
Method of submission, 137 
No-license in, 24 
Party work in, 409 
Political campaign on prohibi- 
tion issue, 43 
Prohibitionists elected in, 331 
Prohibitory law in, 34 
Republicans and submission, 
177 
Seventies, in the, 109 
State enforcement act, repeal 
of, 506 
State party in, 83 
State ticket in 1870, 87 
Vote in 1873, 107 
Warner Miller campaign, 180 
New York City Temperance So- 
ciety, 16 
New York State Temperance 
Society, 15 
Non-Partisan!) WaiG EeiU yy 385 
North Carolina, county vote for 
prohibition, 378 


670 


North Carolina, 
Political action recommended, 
52 
Prohibition obstructed by local 
option, 367, 370 
Prohibitory law adopted, 302 
Prohibitory statute defeated in 
1881, 144 
Vote, 435 
North Dakota, liquor interests 
try to resubmit, 217 
Prohibition adopted, 201 
Vote, 435 
Nullification, 507, 637 


Ohio, amendment, 

prohibition, 141 

Anti-license in 
25, 137 

Anti-Saloon League and local 
option in, 387 

Centennial, 193 

County vote for prohibition, 
Sh Onan | 

Court decision on license, 235 

First anti-saloon law in, 33 

First to have party ticket, 67 

History, 388 

Increase in vote in 1873, 107 

Leonard campaign in, 168 

License amendment in, 380 

Liquor interests defeat public 
men, 345 

Local no-license, 356 

Local option, 373 

Organization of state party, 51 

Personal liberty defined by 
court, 587 

Platform, 1887, 184 

Prohibition newspapers in, 170 

Scott Tax Law, 142 

State convention in, 67, 239 

State platform, 184 

State ticket in 1870, 87 

Statewide prohibition, 3090 

Sunday closing repealed, 130 

Vote in, 435, 436 

Woman’s Crusade in, 117 


history of 


constitution, 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Ohio Voters’ Union, 385 
Oklahoma, statewide law in, 334 
One Hundred Years of Tem- 
perance, 264 
Omni-partisanism, 42, 380 
Consequences of, 395 
Plan, the, 390 
Oregon, amendment submitted, 
140 
County vote for prohibition, 
378 
Dry counties under local op- 
tion, 373 
Early law, 1844, 30 
Party organized in, 148 
Party work in, 406 
State prohibition enforcement, 
408 
Vote, 435, 436 
“Out to Win” campaigns, 232, 
407 


Parties, political, basis of syS- 

tem,’ 612 
Government by, 621 

Party, national, 2r4, 223 

Party action necessary, 184, 208, 
225, 226, 272, 275, 280, 342, 
379; 514, 515, 606, 628, 639 

Party agencies, 614 

Party attitudes, 222 

Party composition, 153, 221, 222, 
282, 380, 399, 509, 512 

Party responsibility, 399 

Party straddle, 224, 400, 512, 630 

Party system and liquor politics, 
629 

Party system inevitable, 612 

Pauperism, decrease of, 480 


Pearson, Sheriff Samuel F., 21Gae 


Peninsular Herald, 66, 99 
Pennsylvania, advance in, 169 
Agitation for political action, 
61 
Brooks high license law, 233 
High license in, 209 
Law against retail trade 
passed and repealed, 34 


ee ee ee 


SS ee ee ee ee eee 


— = ce 


ie 


INDEX 


Pennsylvania, 
Liquor funds used in, 204 
Local option in, 101, 357 
Popular prohibition vote, 33 
Prohibition vote in, 260 
Prohibitionists elected in, 331 
Seventies, in the, 109, 115 
State ticket in, 87 
Venango Plan, 331 
People’s Party in Indiana, 46 
People versus the Liquor Traffic, 
The, John B. Finch, 185 
Permits, alcohol, 500 
Perpetuationists vs. Prohibition- 
ists, 315 
Personal liberty, 151, 586 
“Petition” year, 21 
Philippine Islands, liquor in the, 


395 
Phillips, Wendell, 83 
Pitman, Judge Robert C., 87, 

120,401, 302 
Pivotal states, 565, 623, 639 
Platforms, Party: 

1869, 72 

Te72y OL 

1876, 110 

1880, 124 

1884, 158 

1888, 190 

1892, 207 

1896, 257 

1900, 311 

1904, 328 

1908, 337 

IQI2, 350 

1916, 417 

1920, 458 

1924, 404 

Broad gauge versus 

issue, 255 
Pledge-signing movements, I19 
Political defection, 174, 574 
Political system underlying pro- 

hibition, 508 

Complexity of, 564, 610 

Politics, The, Aristotle, 585 


single 


671 


Populist Party, 252 
Porto Rico, prohibition in, 440 
Presbyterian Church, attitude to- 
ward prohibition, 264 
Connection with Anti-Saloon 
League officially refused, 
392 
General Assembly, statements 
of, 205 
Resolution on 
maps, 360 
Resolutions of, 270 
Scanlon, Dr. Charles, 337 
Temperance, committee 
265 
Temperance Board, 275, 453 
President, candidates for, 93, 98, 
The 0277155) 100, 250, 250, 
316, 326, 351, 414, 462, 467, 
560 
Method of nomination, 634 
Powers of, 626, 635 
Primaries, 400, 623, 634 
Prison statistics, 476 
Prohibition, administration 1920- 
1925, 472, 488, 495 
Agitation for political action, 
C201 
Agitation for state, 25 
Alcohol’s deteriorating effects, 
301 
Amendments 
support, 242 
Analysis of, 607 
Answers to brewers’ challenge, 
62 
Assaults by liquor power, 216 
Attorney-General, U. S., 403 
Benefits of, 217, 474-488, 518- 
582 
Blessings, 37, 38 
Blair constitutional 
ment, 179 
“Bone Dry” laws, 440 
Bootlegging, 218 
Breweries under, 492 
Brewers’ Association and, 57 


local option 


on, 


without party 


amend- 


672 


Prohibition, 

Campaigns for war, 443 

Characteristics of movement 
in the fifties, 37 

Constitutional amendment cam- 
paigns, 135, 201, 242 

Constitutional prohibition, rea- 
sons for, 594 

Convictions, 504 

Date of going into effect, 472, 
473 

Demand enlarged, 482 

Denatured alcohol, 500 

Drive against, the, 211 

Drunkenness under high li- 
cense, 233 

Early advocacy of, 19 

Economic results, 481-486 

Educational results, 486, 582 

Eighties, the later, 184 

Eighties, the middle, 166 

Enforcement, offices for, 402, 
608 

Europe, representatives sent 
to, 343 

Expenditure for drink di- 
verted, 484 

Fifties, in the, 29 

First legislative document fa- 
voring, 19 

Fiscal results, 484 

Foreshadowings of, 18 

General movement, 1907, 344 

Governmental measure, as, 
607 

Governmental system, and the 
American, 605 

Harding’s vote on, 4o1 

Harrison administration, 243 

Hindered by dispensary sys- 
tem, 302 

Hindered by local option, .367 

Indiana court decisions, 334 

Intercollegiate Prohibition As- 
sociation, 324 

Kansas, 222 

Labor and, 481-486 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Prohibition, 


Limitations of amendment 
method, 219 

Lincoln and, 35, 60 

Liquor power, 546 

Local option not a step to- 
ward, 368 

Literature (see Bibliography) 

Literature of the seventies, 
120 

Maine, 319 

Maladministration of law, 496, 
597 

Moral aspects, 486, 583 

National, why, 590 

National constitutional, 447 

Nineties, in the, 238 

Object of, 80 

Party, organization of, 49, 65 

Party attitudes, 222 

Party government and, 621 

Party issue, as a, 640 

Permit system, 500 

Personal liberty, 151, 586 

Political parties in, states, 47 

Political question, 84, 85 


Political system underlying, 
508 

Politics of, the, in the fifties, 
40 


Principle of national, 575 

Procession of the states, 31 

Productivity increased, 482 

Progress, I914-I919, 430 

Progress of state, 31 

Propaganda against, 217, 507, 
637 

Reasons for national, 576, 590 

Reasons for state, 73, 76, 89, 
124, 158 

Recession, the, 39 

Republican Party and, 45, 46, 
148 

Results of, 217, 474-488, 578- 
582 

St. John campaign in Kansas, 
145 


INDEX 673 


Prohibition, 

Search and seizure, 491 

Seventies, in the, 101 

Social basis of, 580 

South, in the, 345, 358 

Sphere of the State, 584 

Stages leading up to state, 26 

Standard of living higher, 483 

State, adoption of (table), 435 

State constitutional amend- 
ment campaigns, 202 

States, procession of the, 31 

States dry, 1914-1919, 430 

“Step” theory, 368 

Straddling policy of old 
parties, 224 

Supreme Court decisions on, 
516 

Tariff question exaggerated, 
194 

Treasury, Secretary of the, 
402 

War, 441 

Webb-Kenyon Law, 365 

Wilderness period of, 379 

Wines, enforcement regarding, 


593. 
Prohibition Alliance, 322 


Prohibition Bombs, 168 


Prohibition Home Protection 
Party;,.279 

Prohibition Party, activity, 1917- 
1925, 452 


After 1872, 106 

After 1876, 114 

Agitation for party organiza- 
tion, 52 

Alignment, 239 

Alliances, 322 

Auxiliary organizations, 323, 
344 

Balance of power of, 169 

Basic principles of, 380 

Beginning years, the, 82 

Candidates, national, 93, III, 
127, 155, 189, 250, 317, 326, 
339, 351, 414, 462, 467 


Prohibition Party, 


Chafin and Watkins cam- 
paigns, 331 
Committees (See 
Committees ) 
Cooperation of W. C. T. U., 
283 
Early difficulties of, 82 
Effect of Blaine defeat, 166 
Eighties, the early, 123 
Elections to legislatures, 254 
Fiftieth Anniversary, 453 
First ticket in Ohio, 67 
Indiana, organization in, 148 
Indianapolis Program, 406 
Influence of, 174-183, 333, 446, 


National 


454 

Leaders, 334, 341, 342, 348 

Lincoln Chautauquas, 332 

Literature, 343 

Minority party effect, 174 

Name, change of, 132 

National Campaigns (See 
Campaigns, National) 

National Chairmen (See Chair- 
men, National) 

National Committee (See Com- 
mittee, National) 

National Conventions (See 
Conventions, National) 

National constitutional amend- 
ment first advocated, 137 

National prohibition, advocacy 
of, 447 

Need for, (See Party Action) 

Nineties, in the, 238 

Nominating convention, first, 
88 

Opposition organizations, 385 

Organization of, 49 

Organizing Convention, 68 

“Out to Win” campaigns, 334, 
407 

Parades, 193 

Pearson, Sheriff, 319 

Personalities, 468 

Philosophy of the, 639 


674 


Prohibition Party, 
Plank, striking, 98 


Platforms (See Platforms, 
Party ) 
Press bureau of National 


Committee, 343 
Reasons for, 49-66, 69-73, 75- 
81, 84-86, 91, 123, 133-134, 
146,152, TOT, 167) 185) 102, 
203; 2282250226, 240)'253, 
267, 270-275, 278-287, 31i, 
317, 319, 321, 342, 379-383, 
392, 399-401, 404, 509-515, 
555-574, 605-641 
Reorganization of, 131 
Representative leaders, 246 
Revival of activity, 304 
Russell’s philosophy, John, 133 
Service of, 239, 454 
Shaw pledge, 411 
South, in the, 167, 334 
Split in, 259, 289, 382 
State chairmen, leading, 306 
State tickets in 1870, 87 
State vote in 1914, 409 
Union, need of, 185 
Wellman’s description of 1908 
convention, 338 
West Virginia, history in, 347 
Prohibition Union of Christian 
Men, 323 
Prohibition Unit, 49s, 504 
Prugh, Dr. B. E. P., 467 


Randall, Charles H., campaign 
of, 409 
Congressional record of, 446 
Raster Resolution, The, 96 
Ratification of Eighteenth 
Amendment (table), 451 
Reed Amendment, 394, 441 
Referendum in adoption, 420, 
434, 624 
Regan, Frank S., 260, 571 
Reminiscences, Neal Dow, 40 
Repeals of prohibition, 39, 43, 
87, 107, 108, 211, 213, 215 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Republican Party, anti-saloon 

movement in, 194 

Arraigned, 124, 158, 249 

Attitude toward prohibition, 
222 

Boutelle Resolution, 195 

Committed to regulation, 143 

Deal with liquor interests in 
New York, 198 

Indiana, in, 149 

Iowa, pressure of national 
party, 214 

Kansas, 148, 222 

Leaders in pay of liquor in- 
terests, 206, 207 

Mulct Law, 214 

National pressure, 214, 223 

New Jersey, in, 172 

New York Democrat, 197 

New York in 1884, 164 

Platforms, Prohibition effect 
on, 175 | 

Prohibition and _ the, 45, 46, 
148 | 

Prohibition efforts in Rhode 
Island, 212 

Prohibition in Iowa, 213 

Raster Resolution, The, 96 

Recession of prohibition caused 


by, 47 
Repeal of prohibitory laws, 
226 
Repression of prohibition, 208 
W. C. T. U. Memorial, 147 
Wet vote, cater to, 97, 104, 


39 
Rhode Island, amendment, 

method of passing, 141 

Constitutional amendment in, 
144 

Constitutional prohibition re- 
pealed, 211 

Law repealed, 39 

Liquor corruption, 209 

Liquor funds used in, 204 

Prohibitory laws in, 32, IOI 

Restrictive laws, 22 


INDEX 


Rhode Island, 
Return to license, 104 
Seventies, in the, 114 
Vote on license in, 356 
Ross, Dr. William, 71 
Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 13, 14 
Russell, John, 59, 64, 66, 68, 71, 
SSreO4, (99; 108, 133) \"1's2, 
188, 635 
Message of, 342 
Philosophy of, 65, 133, 152; 
635 


St. John, John P., 137, 143, 188, 
246, 514 
Candidate for president, 155 
Gubernatorial campaign of, 


145 
Joins Prohibition party, 147 
Political persecution of, 16 
Presidential campaign of, 161 
Saloons (see Liquor Interests) 
Science of Politics, The, Walter 
Thomas Mills, 384 
Scientific Temperance Instruc- 
tion, 178 
Scott, Rev. Samuel, first Pro- 
hibition party candidate for 
Governor, 68 
Six Sermons on Intemperance, 
Rev. Lyman Beecher, 15, 18 
Sixty, Committee of, on Na- 
tional Prohibition, 412 
Officers of, 413 
Pledge of, 412 
Smith, Gerrit, 71, 75, 83 
Smith, Gen. Green Clay, III 
Sobieski, Col. John, 71 
Societies, Temperance: 
American Temperance, 15 
American Temperance Union, 
18 
Congressional Temperance, 17 
Early, 15 
First, organization of, 14 
Independent Order of Good 
Templars, 61 
Maine Temperance, 30 


675 


Societies, 
Maine Temperance Union, 30 
Membership in early, 15 
New York City Temperance, 
16 
New York State Temperance, 
15 
Pledge-signing movements, T19 
Reports, annual, 15, 16 
Resolutions for political ac- 
tion, 60 
Revival of, 60 
Sons of Temperance, 23 
Suppression of Intemperance, 
for the, 15 
Temple of Honor, 65 
Total abstinence adopted by, 
17, 18 
Woman’s Christian Temper- 
ance Union, 116 | 
Woman’s Crusade, 116 
Society for the Suppression of 
Intemperance, 15 
Sons of Temperance, 23, 25, 119 
Membership of, 61 
South Carolina, prohibitory vote 
in, 293 
State dispensary system first 
operated in, 293 
State prohibition adopted, 302 
Vote on prohibition in, 431, 


435 
South Dakota, constitutional pro- 
hibition repealed, 215 
Dispensary system in, 302 
Plebiscite on prohibition in, 
144 
Vote in, 435 
Southern Baptist Church Con- 
vention declaration, 268 
State, sphere of the, 584 
State Prohibition (see Prohibi- 
tion ) 

“Step” theory, 368-372, 393 
Stewart, Gideon T., 88, 90, 107, 
II0, 112, 133, 154, 155 
Stewart, Oliver W., 306, 326, 

339, 423, 504 


676 


“Strengthen America” campaign, 


7 ites on National Prohibition, 
D. Leigh Colvin, 598 
“Sumptuary Laws,” 80, 252 
Supreme Court, United States, 
Compensation question, 523 
Constitutionality of prohibi- 
tion established, 519 
Decisions, groups of, 516, 517 
Decisions, later, 536 
Interstate Commerce 
531 
License cases of 1847, 518 
License decisions, 235 
National prohibition 


cases, 


cases, 


543 
Personal liberty defined, 586 
Prohibition and, 516 
Swallow, Dr. Silas C., 326 


Taxation, Cooley, 235 
Teeter-board, 556, 566 
Temperance, activity in the sev- 
enties, 116 
Basis of, reform, 17 
Development of state prohibi- 
tion, 29 
Karly literature on, 18 
Early movement for, 13 
Presidents, and the, 13, 14 
Washingtonian Movement, 23 
(See Prohibition) 
Temperance Almanac, 18 
Temperance Journal, 108 
Temperance Recollections, John 
Marsh, 25, 45 
Tennessee, local prohibition, his- 
tory of, 363 
Local prohibition unique in, 
369 
Prohibitory law adopted, 302 
Restrictive laws, 22 
Schools and saloons, 363 
State convention, 241 
Statewide law in, 334 
Texas, local option in, 375 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Texas, 
Period from local option to 
_ prohibition, 377 
Prohibition defeated by local 
option, 367 
Vote in, 169 
Thermopyle of reform, 253 
Thomas, John Lloyd, 242, 246, 
380 
Thompson, Mrs. E. J., 117 
Thompson, Dr. HA 2k ee, 
188 
Transportation of liquor, 16 


Union Prohibitory League of 
Pennsylvania, 385 
United Brethren Church, Gen- 
eral Conference, 275 
Opposition to liquor traffic, 
275 
United Committee for War Tem- 
perance Activities in the 
Army and Navy, 453 
United States Brewers’ Associa- 
tion, beer tax, imposition of, 
203 
Congresses of, 56, 98, 103, 
180, 551 
Funds, political, 204 
Haddock murder, 171 
Organization of, 55 
Political activity of, 57, 98, 


103, 104 
Political objects of, 56 
South Dakota campaign 


against prohibition, 215 
Utah, prohibition in, 433 
Prohibition vote in, 377, 435 


Vermont, no-license in, 24 
Prohibition lost in, 437, 438 
ea a laws in, 32 

ote 1n, 437, 4 

Vibbert, Rev. Cee first state 
_ legislator elected, 87 

Vice-president, candidates for, 

94, I12, 128, 157; 189, 251, 


INDEX 


258, 317, 328, 351, 416, 462, 
467 
Virginia, basis of “step” theory, 
370 
County vote for prohibition, 
a7 
Local option in, 374 
Method of obtaining prohibi- 
tion, 430 
Period from local option to 
prohibition, 377 
Process for reaching prohibi- 
tion, 372, 430 
Vote in, 435 
Voice, The, 238, 496 
First. editorial of, 62 
Funds raised by, 194, 210 
Line of battle of, 167 
Liquor investigation in Penn- 
sylvania, 204 
Mailing list stolen, 197 
On amendments, 242 
On party influence, 182 
Ownership, new, 260 
(see The New Voice) 
Volstead Act, 450 
Volstead Law, provisions of, 
490 
Vote, beer and wine, on, 438 
Early eighties, 134 
Eighteenth Amendment, on, 
448 
Finch’s announcement on, 
John B., 164 
In 1874, 108 
In 1886, 169 
Increase in 1881, 130 
Losses in 1908, 341 
Marginal, 565 
Presidential, first, 100 
State, in I9I4, 409, 424 
State prohibition, on, 435, 438 
Upholding, on _ prohibition 
(table), 436 


Wages, effect of liquor on, 578- 
580 


677 


Wages, 
Effect of prohibition on, 483- 
486 
War Prohibition, 441 
Agricultural Bill, 445 
Campaigns for, 443 
“Dry” zones, 446 
Effect, date of going into, 450 
Passage of, 445 
War Restrictions, 472 
Washington, decrease in 
counties, 374 
Votes on liquor propositions, 
435, 436 
Washington, George, on effects 
of liquor, 14 
Washington Court House, Ohio, 
crusade in, I17 
Washingtonian Movement, The, 
23 
Effect on local option legisla 
tion, 356 
Watkins aroniao.g tare AG: 
351, 457, 402 
Wesleyan Methodist Church, 
prohibition attitude, 271 
Webb-Kenyon Act, 365, 440 
Decisions upholding, 440 
West Virginia, county vote for 
prohibition, 370, 378 
Leaders, national, work in, 347 
No-license in, 358 
Prohibition in, history of, 347 
Statewide prohibition vote in, 


dry 


435 
Whisky Frauds, 105 
Whisky Rebellion, suppression 
of, 14 
Whisky Trust, 204, 336 
Willard, Frances (4 118, #132, 
E33 TAS TAG TOL LOO LO, 
188, 447, 514 
Addresses of, 276 
Death of, 260, 290 
“Gospel Politics,’ 280 
National president W. C. 
Te Ue e276 


678 


Willard, Frances E., 
“New Politics, The,” 285 
Political messages of, 276 
W..C. T. U. Memorial, 146, 
154 
Wine, capital invested, 546 
Consumption of, 548 
Wisconsin, civil damage act, first, 
25 
Constitutional amendment de- 
feated, 130 
Convention call issued, 131 
Failure of first prohibitory 
law, 32, 34 
No-license in, 24 
Submission petitioned for, 141 
Vote in, 135 
Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union, I16, 132, 170 


Conventions, 276, 277, 280, 
282, 289 : 

Cooperation with Prohibition 
party, 283 


Lake Bluff Convocation, 279 

Lathrap, Mrs. Mary T., 282 

Membership, 288 

Memorial of, 146, 154 

Moral uprising in Georgia, 
371 

New Jersey petition, 172 


PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES 


Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union, 
Non-partisan W. C. T. U. or- 
ganized, 288 
Resolutions, 280, 285, 287, 289 
Service of, 291 
Temperance instruction laws, 
178 
Willard’s messages, Miss, 276 
Woman’s Crusade, The, 105, 
116, 142, 276 
Woman’s Prohibition Club of 
America, 344 
Woman Suffrage, 90, 127, 628 
Woolley, John G., 273, 316 
Addresses of, 274 
Apostasy of, 336 
World Prohibition Federation, 
343 
Officers of, 344 
World Temperance Convention, 
39 
Wyoming, percentage of vote 
IN, 377 
Prohibition in, 377 
Vote in, 435 


Young People’s Prohibition 
League, 323 


Zurcher, Father George, 269 





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